Fossils Of Ancient Sea Monster Found In Montana
A fossil-hunting trip to celebrate a son’s homecoming resulted in the recent discovery of an ancient sea monster in central Montana.
Pat Druckenmiller, in the collection room of MSU’s Museum of the Rockies, displays the skull and lower jaw of an ancient sea monster found in central Montana. (MSU photo by Jay Thane)
Believed to be approximately 70 million years old, its skull and lower jaw represent the first complete skull of a long-necked plesiosaur found in Montana, according to Montana State University experts. The skull is said to be one of the best specimens of its kind in North America.
“It’s a very important specimen,” MSU paleontologist Jack Horner said at the Museum of the Rockies where the fossil rests in boxes. “We have been looking for it for a long, long time.”
Ken Olson of Lewistown said he and his son, Garrett, found the fossils in mid-August about 75 miles northeast of Lewistown. Since Horner was in Mongolia, Olson said he prepared the fossils himself and delivered them to Horner about three weeks later. Olson, a retired Lutheran pastor, has long collected fossils for the museum. Two of his best finds are the large Torosaurus skulls displayed there.
Horner said the head of a short-necked plesiosaur was found previously in Montana, but he had been waiting for the discovery of a complete long-necked plesiosaur skull. Both were ancient sea reptiles that lived during the time of the dinosaurs.
There is some more background information, illustrations, and a complete skeleton on plesiosaurs here.
Some very nice photos of a Glasswing Butterfly(Greta Oto) here.
Glasswing Butterfly(Greta Oto) is a brush-footed butterfly where its wings are transparent. The tissue between the veins of its wings looks like glass.
With the miserable Microsoft Zune out or almost out, it reminded me of some of the alternatives out there. This one is a little expensive at $500 full retail (try newegg or eBay), but it is feature rich – Epson P-2000 Multimedia Storage Viewer
Has a 40G hard drive, handles CompactFlash Card type I, CompactFlash Card type II, Microdrive, SD Memory Cards, external HDD function, reads photos (JPEG, RAW), reads video (MPEG-4, Motion JPEG), and audio (AAC, MP3). I don’t know of any rights management problems as far as what you can store, so wherever you got your music or video doesn’t matter.
