Ancient 'Godzilla' Crocodile Discovered

SenseOfHumor writes "Paleontologists have discovered a huge crocodile which was a predator of large sea creatures. A Jurassic-age crocodile had the massive jaws and jagged teeth needed to hunt large sea prey, paleontologists say. The crocodile, nicknamed Godzilla, was nearly four metres long with a short snout like a T. rex, four fins and a vertical, fishlike tail." Photos and drawings are available at National Geographic, and more science at ScienceDaily.

Comments

Now that's what I call

[external400kdiskette]

" massive jaws and jagged teeth "
"The crocodile, nicknamed Godzilla"

my idea of intelligent design :)

Re:Now that's what I call

[speed_of_light]

Not really. Intelligent design would have allowed him to speak, and given him arms and legs with which to do great things for the world. . . Wait, scratch that. It's been done. Didn't work out.

Re:Now that's what I call

[CriminalNerd]

Although it didn't work out, you can still see the remnants downtown.

Gojira

[joe_bruin]

Clearly this proves Intelligent Design, because only God would make Godzilla, the holy lizard in His name.

Re:Gojira

[external400kdiskette]

Yeah, I guess he created humans to kill each other for his entertainment for all eternity he had to settle for watching this croczilla pulverise sea creatures lacking the benefits of jagged teeth.

Re:Gojira

[external400kdiskette]

he=before

Re:Gojira

[LnxAddct]

I know you were joking but...

While this isn't an interesting find because of its size, it does add to the credibility of evolution. This species is similar to ancient crocodiles, which also had more features in common with fish, i.e. their tails, but (in addition to some other changes) this fossil has a unique skull. This is a great example of another transitional fossil to add to the record, and this find follows what evolution predicted to the "T". This fossil is exactly what one form of evolution predicts, specifically convergent evolution.

For those who don't know, evolution encompasses three basic principles, or "subgroups" for lack of a better word, of evolution that further refine, explain, and predict various mutations. The other two are divergent evolution and what is often referred to as coevolution (a parasite and a host, predator and prey, or animals and flowers that depend on each other for pollination or other things often evolve in response to each other over millions of years). Granted Evolution encompasses much more than the tiny fraction of a percent mentioned here.

Evolution is such a well studied and useful science, its ashame that so many ignorant people don't understand it like they claim they do. They don't know about the 10's of thousands of transitional fossils, they haven't seen the proof, yet alone understand it. At this point in the game, there really is no arguing against evolution in any place where real science is practiced, its like arguing against gravity. These I.D. people don't realize how stupid they are making themselves look. This isn't meant to be inflammatory, its just some people need to wake the hell up.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Gojira

[Trogre]

You don't seriously think there isn't more to the universe than we can see now?

Where do you think the stories about sea monsters and dragons across multiple cultures come from?

Re:Gojira

[shmlco]

And a "croc" with four fins instead of legs. Another transitional feature.

Re:Gojira

[letxa2000]

While this isn't an interesting find because of its size, it does add to the credibility of evolution.

Y'think? Let's see some quotes from TFA:

"The researchers don't yet know what events triggered the relatively sudden emergence of the large crocodile..."

Sounds like more data that evolution can't really explain.

"Unlike the crocodiles we know today, Dakosaurus andiniensis lived entirely in the water, and had fins instead of legs."

What part of the skull did the researches base *that* conclusion on?

" Pol used sophisticated software to map the features of those bones and determine its lineage. "

Oooohh, "sophisticated software." I trust we'll hear more about the science of how they "determined its lineage". I'm a software engineer and "sophisticated software" doesn't impress me... I want to know what this software actually did.

"It measured 13 feet from nose to tail."

Still interested in how they concluded that based on the skull. I'm assuming there must be more fossil elsewhere, but curiously none of the "technical" diagrams include more than its head. Some of the "artists concept" drawings show a little more as the thing supposedly jumps out of the water, but I've seen no technical diagrams of anything but the head which leaves me wondering where this 13-feet figure is coming from.

Then we have this:

""The most perplexing thing about the animal is that its head shape does not appear to be well suited to a fast swimming crocodilian, because rather than being streamlined, it is somewhat high and flattened from side to side," said Clark, who was not involved with the research."

So rather than contemplate other explanations (maybe it wasn't so closely related to a croc? maybe it wasn't even aquatic--sometimes mammals can actually find there way into water and die, y'know), we automatically assume this is some groundbreaking discovery? Maybe it's so weird it's wrong?

Or how about:

""If you went to a crocodile worker and said, Let's say you had a chance to evolve something new out of this group, what would you do? And you gave them a pad and a pencil, the last thing they would draw would be a skull that looks like Dakosaurus."

So this thing basically contradicts everything we think we know about crocs, but dang it, evolution is right so this is just amazing, isn't it?

This one is choice:

"It's a beautiful example of the unpredictable nature of evolution, and the variety of things that dinosaur-age crocodiles did."

And here I was thinking that science was supposed to be falsifiable, testable, and actually be a useful predictor? And here they're celebrating just how unpredictable it is? I'm glad other theories are a little more relaible. I'd hate to be walking into my house and suddenly find gravity reverse itself and hit my head on the ceiling. *

Color me unimpressed.

* Note: If gravity did reverse itself, would you be prepared? How would you keep the coins in your pocket? I have the answer: Nudity! (This poorly-quoted quote is left as an exercise for the reader to discover its source).

Re:Gojira

[Kroc]

God is his title, Jehova is his name ;)

Re:Gojira

[zaphod123]

That post is genius, Real Genius.

The post does express things that bug me about some scientists.
1. The recreation of a creature from a miniscule amount of data.
2. The Orwellian nature of some parts of science. Once a theory is replaced by another, nobody seems to be cognizant of the fact that the current pet theory could be as easily replaced as the last theory. (We are at war with blue, we have always been at war with blue.)

Re:Gojira

[pohl]

And here I was thinking that science was supposed to be falsifiable, testable, and actually be a useful predictor?

You almost get it. Falsifiable is an absolute requirement. Usefulness as a predictor must merely be present, but does not need to be everpresent., as in the case of nonlinear systems with lots of feedback.

For example, The meteorologists' inability to tell me if it will be raining one year from today in Podunk, Nebraska does not invalidate the models used, nor could it be used to imply the presence of a divine hand. The limited prediction that the models do provide is considered sufficient. In fact, the theory predicts that long-term prediction is difficult...yet another correct prediction.

In the case of evolutionary theory, limited predictive ability exists as well. In particular, the theory allowed us to predict the discovery of intermediate forms. Every intermediate form discovered is a successful prediction by the theory. The discovery of some form that does not happen to be intermediate does not invalidate the model at all. That it won't predict what your ancestors will look like in a million years is immaterial with respect to the model being "useful as a predictior".

Re:Gojira

[LnxAddct]

Sounds like more data that evolution can't really explain.

The quote said "don't yet know". They are still examining its environment and surrounding areas, hypothesizing and testing. This is what intelligent folk do, they don't just assume that since they don't understand the answer that some magical entity did it.

Oooohh, "sophisticated software." I trust we'll hear more about the science of how they "determined its lineage". I'm a software engineer and "sophisticated software" doesn't impress me... I want to know what this software actually did.

The sophisticated software they used is probably more complex than anything you've ever written. Bones and features essentially make a "fingerprint" of sorts. A skull in particular requires more than enough information to identify a species based on things like antoribital/portorbital fenestrae, anapsid, diapsid features, bone structure, jaw structure (herbivores chew flat, carnivores tend to chew like scissors, but within species it become even more detailed), arches, etc... These features are enough to classify a species according to modern cladistics. The software used, assists in comparing bone features with the hundreds of thousands of other fossils in the database, which also proves consistency.

Still interested in how they concluded that based on the skull. Well this is actually the 3rd fossil they've found in the past decade. This one had the most complete skull. Regardless, even if all you had was the skull and it was classified, using statistics you can get a good idea of the size of the animal. This has been proven to be accurate hundreds of thousands of times. Statistics are very useful for many things, there is also a function of the size an animal determined by the size of the landmass it lived on, and the general intelligence of an animal based on its skull size to rest of body. I am only barely touching the surface of the many techniques used in modern paleontology though. It is a quite complete and understood thing.

So this thing basically contradicts everything we think we know about crocs, but dang it, evolution is right so this is just amazing, isn't it? No actually they asked someone who is familiar with crocs how they would improve it, essentially they asked an intelligent designer what they would improve and the intelligent designer implied that it would not have been this. Therefore further giving credibility that evolution is not an intelligent process, but rather random and "bad" mutations die off. So far nothing contradicts this.

And as far as the unpredictable comment goes, I couldn't find it in the articles, but I may have simply missed it. Whoever said that, I'm not sure what the context was, but either they were blatantly wrong, misquoted, or trying to make this finding seem mystical in some fashion. Evolution has been used to predict literally millions of results, all of which have been accurate.

You can deny it all you want, but you'd be wrong. Some people find ignorance bliss, and if that is how you want to live life, whatever. But Evolution in an undisputed theory, I would put the my life and the life of my loved ones on it. You are a direct result of microevolution, this is undisputed. But many microevolutions over a period of time result in large changes. If you take the sum of any number greater than 0, regardless of how small it is, to infinity or some arbitraily large number, you will get another arbitraily large number. These evolutionary changes happened on a scale too large for many humans to comprehend. Also most humans are selfish and ignorant beings who have enough balls to claim that they were designed in the form of God. You are not as special as you think you are, you are the result of a series of random, yet directed, mutations. Get over it, you are not as important in the scheme of things as you want to be.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Gojira

[snake_dad]

And here I was thinking that science was supposed to be falsifiable, testable, and actually be a useful predictor?

Evolution scientists cannot predict exactly which changes to a species will happen, since there is a random part, namely which mutations will actually happen to individuals of that species. However, they can predict in certain cases which kind of mutations, if they happen, will likely be favored by selection, or weeded out by selection. But it's impossible to know for certain wether adaptive change will occur, or wether species will die out, given changed environmental conditions.

Re:Gojira

[IHateEverybody]

2. The Orwellian nature of some parts of science. Once a theory is replaced by another, nobody seems to be cognizant of the fact that the current pet theory could be as easily replaced as the last theory. (We are at war with blue, we have always been at war with blue.)

Theories aren't always "replaced." For example, Newton's theory of gravity was replaced by Einstein's Relativity but still remains valid and quite useful at speeds which are much slower than the speed of light. This is because Newtonian Gravity wasn't really replaced by Relativity, it was merely expanded to cover situations where it would otherwise break down. The same situation applies to evolution. The day that Intelligent Design can actually predict that evolution (or show how can appear to happen even though it doesn't happen at all) happens differently with the presence of a designer than without, it will become a true scientific theory. Until then, it's just creationism dressed up in a lab coat and glasses, pretending to be smart.

Re:Gojira

[letxa2000]

The sophisticated software they used is probably more complex than anything you've ever written.

You really have no information on which to base that speculation, do you? And even if you did, it's irrelevant. The point being that I know more than enough about software engineering that "sophisticated software" doesn't do it for me. I need to know what this awesome software does before that sentence in the article has any importance to me. What's sophisticated to one person is peanuts to another.

These features are enough to classify a species according to modern cladistics. The software used, assists in comparing bone features with the hundreds of thousands of other fossils in the database, which also proves consistency.

If this is the case, I'm at a loss as to why this is a big deal and everyone is excited about his "work." Sounds more like he plugged some data into the palentologist fingerprint software and it spit out an answer. So what?

Me: So this thing basically contradicts everything we think we know about crocs, but dang it, evolution is right so this is just amazing, isn't it?

You: No actually they asked someone who is familiar with crocs how they would improve it, essentially they asked an intelligent designer what they would improve and the intelligent designer implied that it would not have been this. Therefore further giving credibility that evolution is not an intelligent process, but rather random and "bad" mutations die off. So far nothing contradicts this.

Hahaha, so you're saying that--assuming intelligent design were real--this croc expert is an authoritive answer on what the much-more-intelligent-designer would do? Ok... :)

And as far as the unpredictable comment goes, I couldn't find it in the articles, but I may have simply missed it.

Yep, you missed it because it was at the link I provided.

Whoever said that, I'm not sure what the context was, but either they were blatantly wrong, misquoted, or trying to make this finding seem mystical in some fashion.

It was said by Paul Sereno, a University of Chicago paleontologist and National Geographic Society Explorer-in-Residence. He's also the "croc expert" who is apparently as intelligent as the intelligent designer. :)

But Evolution in an undisputed theory...

That, my friend, is incorrect. There are plenty of people who dispute it, including honest scientists in the field that recognize a lot of problems with the theory. They may "believe" in evolution and are interested in continuing research to refine it, but at least they are honest enough to recognize its limitations and problems in its current form.

You are a direct result of microevolution, this is undisputed.

Again, please be honest. Feel free to say that a lot of scientists agree with you, but to suggest that even all of those that do believe this put such blind faith in the theory is incorrect. In honest peer-review, there are acknowledgements of limitations and the potential problems of the theories and findings that are obtained.

These evolutionary changes happened on a scale too large for many humans to comprehend.

4.5 billion years isn't so big a number that intelligent humans can't comprehend it. Don't try to make this thing seem more overwhelming than it really is.

Also most humans are selfish and ignorant beings who have enough balls to claim that they were designed in the form of God. You are not as special as you think you are, you are the result of a series of random, yet directed, mutations. Get over it, you are not as important in the scheme of things as you want to be.

You are clueless to anyone's beliefs but yourself, it would seem, but I thank you for making an attempt to misrepresent mine.

I

Re:Gojira

[letxa2000]

Nice. You abandon your losing battles in the Kansas thread, and come over here and make the same stupid potshots at evolution, to the same effect. Get a life.

I do have a life which is exactly why, thusfar, I haven't had time to continue in the other thread. I was actually going to bring up this 'Godzilla' topic in the other thread--then I saw a brand new thread was created on the topic.

It's the weekend, go have fun away from your computer for a few minutes!

Re:Gojira

[LnxAddct]

Nice response, its good to see people still think out responses on /. :-) Microevolution *is* undisputed though. You are the combination of DNA with a chance of minor mutations. You are a new combination, if this new combination turns out to be neutral or positive you will most likely go on to reproduce and spread those good genes. If this new mutation is negative, you will in many cases die (often before you are even born, sometimes after you are born but with severe deformaties, either mentally or phsyically) before ever reproducing thus not spreading those bad genes on. Your birth was microevolution in work. If you don't like that, then go to any university and sign up for a curriculum that will let you force the evolution of flys in a lab. You can observe many species of flys evolving in real time, or even easier is bacteria. Microevolution is just the combination of DNA with random mutations and typically from two distinct sources. Those random mutations are few, and only about 5% turn out to be negative. 90% are neutral and 5% are positive (Those numbers are very rough figures +-2-3%). I have yet to see any truly scientific work take a theory from evolution and show that it is wrong, most use a straw man argument or some other weak basis. I am a practicing Roman Catholic, I believe in God, I go to church, but this intelligent design stuff is nonsense. It upsets me to see people blinded by faith.
Regards,
Steve

Re:Gojira

[letxa2000]

Microevolution *is* undisputed though.

I don't dispute microevolution. But if microevolution implies macroevolutions, we should see incremental movements from a previous version of an organism to the new, evolved version. "Discoveries" such as this 'Godzilla' seems to be the exact opposite: It appeared out of nowhere and the articles I've read on it say that paleontologists "can't explain" how it happened so suddenly.

To tell the truth, I'm kind of confused what evolutionists believe anymore. I don't know if that's because they don't articulate their position well, because their position changes frequently, or because I haven't been paying close enough attention, but: Is the current evolution belief that evolution happens through a bunch of extremely small microevolution steps and eventually produces something new? Or does evolution say that it is perfectly reasonable to discover a brand new species (such as Godzilla) that seems to have appeared "suddenly" out of nowhere?

It seems like either way there are some problems regarding making the data fit the theory. Unless they adopt both positions in which case I have to call B.S. :)

Re:Gojira

[LnxAddct]

Here is an excerpt from a previous post of mine, maybe this will help:

For some examples of living transitional species, look at dogs and wolves (which can be interbred), modern agriculture, and a few species of squirrels( On different sides of the Grand Canyon you'll find nearly identical squirrels, the difference being that on the side of the canyon that is higher, it is colder and you see that over time they've developed traits suited more for the climate and eventually became an individual species. Also if you take certain species of squirrels from say Pennsylvania and mate them with that same species from Ohio, they can mate fine, but try to mate it with a squirrel of the same species from California and it will most likely fail or be extremely hard to get to work because this species is on the verge of speciation where they form into two separate species that can no longer breed together.)

Anyone who claims that there is no evidence of transistional fossils or species is just plain and simple repeating non-sense, but no matter how much you say, it isn't true. Here is the known cladogram for just dinosauria, look at all transitions, and these are just the ones that have been found and proven, there are still large parts of the earth left to search, not to mention under the thousands of miles of ice at the poles which are currently unreachable but in the age of the dinosaurs were most liklely prolific with life. You kind find similar diagrams for *every* single species. When combined, it is huge, one of the biggest and best documented diagrams in all of man's history.

Hereis a very truncated version of the cladogram for modern killer whales, the full cladogram contains significantly more detail. The things I present here are just the beginning, actually look at the science in depth and realize what a well founded and proven theory evolution is.

The "Godzilla" croc doesn't go against evolution. Read this for one example of convergent evolution, which is what happened with this croc (having fish like and carnivorous features due to the niche it lived in). I have a feeling that certain aspects of the findings are being sensationalized by the media for headlines, i.e. the "Godzilla" nickname implies certain things about the croc that just aren't true, and the media is paying too much attention to the nickname. The species btw did not appear out of nowhere :) It was similar enough to previous species that it already was in a Kingdom, Phylum, Class, Order, Family, and Sub-Family. It only was given a genus and species, implying that it has more similarities than differences with already found fossils. Keep in mind though that paleontology is under 200 years old, so there still is alot to be uncovered... finding a brand new never before seen animal isn't that far fetched, further research and explanation usually fills in the holes if there are any.
Regards,
Steve

Mario Mayors and Disasters.

[CHESTER COPPERPOT]

You'll notice on that first photo on the National Geographic that Godzilla is in fact battling what scientists have renamed a Mothra not a pterodactyl.

Re:Mario Mayors and Disasters.

[jakel2k]

The correct name should be Rodan, (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rodan) Sheesh...

Cue the....

[Chickenofbristol55]

large crowd of screaming Japanese people!

Not that huge

[Anonymous Coward]

How this could be a "huge" crocodile? wikipedia lists crocs bigger than that.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crocodile

Re:Not that huge

[mchawi]

I'm glad I'm not the only one that had this thought. I've seen Steve Irwin wrestle crocs larger than that ;)

Maybe it grows bigger if you're nice to it. Of course, maybe they're thinking 'if I drop a nuke on this I'd have Godzilla!'. Who ever knows with scientists...

Re:Not that huge

[Audacious]

Yeah, I went "Say what?" when they said 4 METERS! The Smithsonian had a snake on display one time that wound through four rooms and was large enough to eat an elephant whole. THAT was large! (And a bit scary too!) Made me nervous just seeing how large it was and thinking what I'd do if I met such a creature (like mess my pants and run like crazy!).

But then, if you have never gone to Washington D.C. and gone to the Smithsonian - you need to make the trip. The natural sciences building has all sorts of fantastic things on display. They had a wooly mammoth on display when I was there as well. Huge beast. But no where near as scary as that giant snake.

The got'cha was the skeleton of the T-Rex they had hidden behind a turn. You came around the turn and there it was with it's mouth open ready to bite you in half. I heard several people make half-screams (those little eeps!) when they came to it. Strangely my first reaction was to sock the thing one until I realized it was just a skeleton. I guess the old fight or flight thing was in overdrive after having been shocked with the snake.

Re:Not that huge

[speed_of_light]

You'll find the biggest crocs in congress!

Re:Not that huge

[Paska]

> I've seen Steve Irwin wrestle crocs larger than that ;)

Crickey! This Steve Irwin bloke sounds like he is an alcoholic.

Or he is just stupid.

Yes, I am Australian and no average Australian's don't try to wrestle crocs on a daily basis.

Re:Not that huge

[Colin Douglas Howell]

Yeah, lots of people here are picking up on the overuse of breathless superlatives with this thing. It's kind of ridiculous. Four meters is hardly "huge" even by the standards of modern crocs, much less some of the prehistoric ones. (It does sound rather large for the sort of specialized marine crocodiles this beast was related to.) Quotes like "the most fearsome predator in the sea" (from the Science Daily article) are also silly, considering that this time frame was also the era of the giant pliosaurs, which could easily reach ten meters in length with jaws two meters long.

Still, I wouldn't like to swim in waters inhabited by these brutes.

Re:Not that huge

[Loonacy]

Hmm... Smacking a T-Rex on the snout...
Sounds like a terrific idea to me.

Re:Not that huge

[Stephen Ma]

The Cretacious "SuperCroc" was 40 ft long.

Re:Not that huge

[Audacious]

Hey! No one ever said fight or flight was rational. :-)

Re:Not that huge

[Haeleth]

Yes, I am Australian and no average Australian's don't try to wrestle crocs on a daily basis.

"No average Australians don't try to wrestle crocs on a daily basis" == "All average Australians try to wrestle crocs on a daily basis". Man, life must be fun down under!

Oh, please...

[rasafras]

Only 13 feet? Hell, I used to wrestle gators bigger than that in New York sewers...

Re:Oh, please...

[NanoGator]

" Hell, I used to wrestle gators bigger than that in New York sewers..."

Didja stop before or after you got your ass kicked by some punks shouting cowabunga?

Re:Oh, please...

[j0ugh]

Well, I used to bullseye wombats bigger than that in my T-16 back home.

CRIKEY!

[perlow]

"Now mate, look what happens when I shove my whole body up this Jurrasic croc's cloaca. She gets really grumpy, But not as grumpy as my wife!"

Re:CRIKEY!

[ross.w]

yes, but does it eat babies?

Re:CRIKEY!

[game kid]

...isn't she gawgeous?

Re:CRIKEY!

[jasontheking]

perhaps it was a reference to this episode. It wasn't steve's finest hour.

4 meters? Godzilla?

[ManyLostPackets]

How about this one?, big as a school bus! http://www.supercroc.com/pressarticles/msnbc.htm

Re:This was on Digg yesterday...

[Sinryc]

Digg? What is this Digg you speak of? And Im being serious.

Huge Crocodile! Nearly 4 meters long!

[Anon.Pedant]

Maybe the poster was so breathless from all the hype that they didn't notice that this HUGE Godzilla-like beast is SMALLER than modern crocodiles. Nile Crocodiles can be 5 meters long, while Saltwater Crocs can be over six meters. Revised headline: Paleontologists discover midget crocodile! -- Anonymous Pedant

Re:Huge Crocodile! Nearly 4 meters long!

[Artega VH]

Exactly. In fact the largest recorded Saltwater crocodile was almost 9 meters in length.

The first thing I thought when I read this (and its been in regular news sites for a day and a bit) was "mmm thats pretty small" and its especially small when compared with SuperCroc (although there is an interesting clash of largest recorded sizes for salties between those two wikipedia articles)

Re:Huge Crocodile! Nearly 4 meters long!

[nosferatu-man]

Hell, it's smaller than a bull alligator.

Re:Huge Crocodile! Nearly 4 meters long!

[itsthebin]

[Quote]Largest crocodile ever recorded? What about the big fish stories I mentioned earlier? Would you believe the largest saltwater crocodile ever reported was 10.1 m (33.1 feet)? This animal was apparently killed in the Bay of Bengal, and was so large only its head was recovered. A skull reportedly belonging to this animal was stored in the British Museum, but when it was measured later it was estimated to have come from a 15.7 ft (4.8 m) crocodile - less than half the claimed length. The skull of another claimed 29 ft (8.8 m) monster was also later determined to belong to a crocodile no larger than 16.2 ft (4.9 m). These are still big crocodiles, but typical of the exaggeration normally associated with large crocodiles. Still, some of these stories seem more credible. Saltwater crocodiles above 6 m (20.3 feet) were certainly much more common in Australia and SE Asia before extensive hunting for their skins in the 1940's, 50's and 60's wiped out the big crocodiles. Some old hunters claim to have shot animals over 8 m (26 feet) during this period (e.g. a 27 ft [8.1 m] saltwater crocodile from the Staaton River in Queensland in the early 1970's). But without reliable measurements, such records are lost to the past. These days, if you wish to convince anyone then please use a straight tape measure whilst sober from the tip of the upper jaw to the tip of the complete tail! So what is the largest crocodile ever recorded? In more recent times, there are very few reliable measurements of extremely large crocodiles, but they do exist. A skull from a saltwater crocodile from Orissa, India, was large enough to have come from a crocodile between 20 and 23 feet in length. Its true size remains a mystery. The two largest reliable records of complete animals are both from 20.3 ft (6.2 m) crocodiles: the first was shot in the Mary River in the Northern Territory of Australia in 1974 by poachers and measured by wildlife rangers; the second was killed in 1983 in the Fly River in Papua New Guinea. In this latter crocodile, it was actually the skin that was measured by zoologist Jerome Montague, and as skins are known to underestimate the size of the actual animal it's likely this crocodile was at least another 10 cm / 4 inches longer. This is my candidate for the largest crocodile ever recorded. Unfortunately, because of the time needed for wild crocodiles to reach this size, the low number of individuals which seem predisposed to reach such sizes, and problems of crocodiles conflicting with expanding human populations, it seems unlikely that we will see many of these giants again.[/quote] http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/natsci/herpetology/britto ncrocs/cbd-faq-q2.htm

Re:Huge Crocodile! Nearly 4 meters long!

[beforewisdom]

Maybe the poster was so breathless from all the hype that they didn't notice that this HUGE Godzilla-like beast is SMALLER than modern crocodiles. Nile Crocodiles can be 5 meters long, while Saltwater Crocs can be over six meters. Revised headline: Paleontologists discover midget crocodile! -- Anonymous Pedant

Length is one dimension. I wonder if this godzilla crocodile was otherwise bigger than modern crocodiles.

Re:This was on Digg yesterday...

[yoho_jones]

digg.com Lets you submit stories and people vote on most relevent giving the audience a quick view of the most interesting stories. Started by Kevin Rose of Tech Tv.

We're used to old news...

[Sebilrazen]

...but come on, this is just Prehistoric.

First thought...

[c_forq]

was "man, Toyko is gonna be f%cked.
Second thought was does this give more credability to the people that say man existed the same time as these things, citing myths containing them to be evidence.
Third thought is that thing is way too freaking small to be Godzilla, I'm disappointed now. (All because of the name, if they would have just said Giant Serpent or something I would be fine).

Re:First thought...

[damsa]

Japanese people were a lot smaller back then.

Snouts

[jcr]

I wonder why modern crocs have elongated jaws. Does it give them any particular advantage in hunting?

Any zoologists care to weigh in?

-jcr

Re:Snouts

[Nazadus]

I'm not a zoologist, however if I had to venture a guess:
The snouts lengths increased as it began eawting more water based creaters than land based. Fish would seem allot easier to catch and eat (this saving energy) than a bear or whatever.

Having a longer snout would also make it harder to close if it catches something at the bare end of it's teeth -- since it's something small like fish, it doesn't matter. But if it's a bigger animal (like a Dinosaur), I would assume that having a smaller but more potent (size matters here, just inversly) would be *much* more beneficial.

They are cold blooded creatures, so the more energy they save -- the better off they are.

This is just a guess on my part though.

Re:Snouts

[krayzkrok]

The shape of the snout is influenced by diet. Those species with strong bites for hard-shelled prey (eg. alligators, caimans) have wide, broad snouts that are reinforced and capable of withstanding higher bite pressures. Long snouts ("longirostrine") are more easily swept through the water - less resistance - and hence are found in species that eat aquatic prey, fish etc.

However, crocs are opportunistic predators and most longirostrine species will eat terrestrial prey if given half the chance. Even Indian Gharials - those classic slender snouted species - have been observed taken birds on rare occasions. Of course, you wouldn't find a gharial eating a turtle. Their jaws simply aren't strong enough.

The false gharial has a long snout, but it's relatively robust and hence explains why it can be seen taking mammals as large as primates (eg. macaques). Fossil crocs with long snouts, therefore, need to be interpreted with care!

Re:This was on Digg yesterday...

[c_forq]

seriously, I read Slashdot for the comments. I heard about this probably 36 hours ago from National Geographic (who will be featuring it in their December issue). For almost any news on slashdot I have another site I read it on first. But I have been reading slashdot for probably 2 years (and posting for a few weeks now) because I think the comments posted here and the moderation system is far more valueable then just news reports. I'm fine with dupes, slow news, and bad editors as long as there is a good amount of intelligent commentors.

Technically Digg.com isn't original either

[technoextreme]

They are both news agregators and thus provide links to stories from some other website. Hence neither provide original content.

Re:Let them extract the DNA

[Anon.Pedant]

You can't be serious; these are 140 million year old fossils! These are rocks, and you can be sure they won't "find a few cells." Even DNA from mammoths that have been frozen for only 10 thousand years are fragmentary.
(Or maybe I just don't get the joke.)

Size doesn't matter

[frodo from middle ea]

belive it or not mosquitos are the no. 1 killers of the modern world

Re:Size doesn't matter

[mikecron]

No, they're not. It's what they carry.

Re:Size doesn't matter

[nosferatu-man]

Well, Plasmodium falciparum, to be pedantic.

Re:Size doesn't matter

[raoul666]

Right direction, but it's the stuff in the mosquitos that gets ya. Malaria, yellow feaver, all that good stuff. It really is the small stuff.

Re:Size doesn't matter

[AndroidCat]

"Ah Ah, I know what you're thinking. 'Did she bite six times or only five?' Now, to tell you the truth, in all this excitement I kind of lost track myself. But being as this is the Plasmodium falciparum, the most powerful protozoan parasite in the world, and could blow your metabolism clean off, you've got to ask yourself a question: 'Do I feel lucky?' Well, do ya, punk?"

Re:This was on Digg yesterday...

[Sinryc]

Oh. Thank you. If I had mod points, and could, I would mod you +1 Informative.

Re:This was on Digg yesterday...

[jamesh]

I'm finding more and more articles that appear on Slashdot, appear on an au news site that I read (http://abc.net.au/news) days, even weeks, beforehand.

Yet I still keep reading slashdot...

Zonk you pulling another 48er?

[seanvaandering]

Check these timestamps...

Science: Ancient 'Godzilla' Crocodile Discovered
Posted by Zonk on Friday November 11, @09:48PM

Watching All Six Star Wars Movies Simultaneously
Posted by Zonk on Friday November 11, @07:44PM

Slashback: KDE, Tsunami Hacker, and Image Bugs
Posted by Zonk on Friday November 11, @06:43PM

IT: Ignore Vista Until 2008
Posted by Zonk on Friday November 11, @05:54PM

Games: The Reality of Patent Expirations for the NES
Posted by Zonk on Friday November 11, @05:12PM

Your Rights Online: Three Companies Shutdown For Spyware Bundling
Posted by Zonk on Friday November 11, @04:31PM

AOL Fight Narrows To Two Players
Posted by Zonk on Friday November 11, @03:49PM

IT: Sony Pulls Controversial Anti-Piracy Software
Posted by Zonk on Friday November 11, @03:14PM

Games: Old School Gameplay Collides With Modern Graphics
Posted by Zonk on Friday November 11, @02:41PM

Linux: Microsoft Reports OSS Unix Beats Windows XP
Posted by Zonk on Friday November 11, @01:55PM

Book Reviews: Hardening Linux
Posted by samzenpus on Friday November 11, @01:10PM

Linux: Dell's Open Source Desktop Systems
Posted by Zonk on Friday November 11, @12:29PM

Your Rights Online: Amazon Gets Patent on Consumer Reviews
Posted by Zonk on Friday November 11, @11:50AM

Science: Quantum Computing Regulation Already?
Posted by Zonk on Friday November 11, @11:14AM

IT: Data Centers And DC Power
Posted by Zonk on Friday November 11, @10:33AM

Apple: Mac OS X x86 Put To The Test
Posted by Zonk on Friday November 11, @09:51AM

Linux: Torvalds Gets Tough on Kernel Contributors
Posted by Zonk on Friday November 11, @09:12AM

Games: Revolution Least Expensive Next-Gen Console
Posted by Zonk on Friday November 11, @08:31AM

That would be almost 14 hours solid on Slashdot, with a break provided by samzenpus at 1pm - is it really that bad to work for CmdrTaco? :)

Re:Zonk you pulling another 48er?

[teh*fink]

hah! he probably queued up the stories

Re:Zonk you pulling another 48er?

[NanoGator]

"That would be almost 14 hours solid on Slashdot..."

Well that sank my amusing crack about his proof-reading competence.

Size is relative

[quantaman]

Sure 4 m may not seem like a giant crocodile but I don't think anyone can deny that the creature in this "photo" is a giant for sure!!

Seriously, that flying dinosaur it's going after would have to be the size of a sparrow for the scales in that picture to work!

respect_for_national_geographic--;

Re:Size is relative

[Colin Douglas Howell]

Sure 4 m may not seem like a giant crocodile but I don't think anyone can deny that the creature in this "photo" is a giant for sure!!

Seriously, that flying dinosaur it's going after would have to be the size of a sparrow for the scales in that picture to work!

respect_for_national_geographic--;

You can leave your respect for National Geographic alone; there's nothing wrong with the scale in that painting as long as you remember that most pterosaurs weren't huge. This croc's skull is about 2.5 feet long, with the jaws being a little over half that length, and there were plenty of pterosaurs with wingspans of a meter or less, especially during the Jurassic and earlier. It was only when the birds started diversifying in the Cretaceous, taking over all the small-flyer niches, that the remaining pterosaurs were forced to become giants.

Re:Size is relative

[quantaman]

You can leave your respect for National Geographic alone; there's nothing wrong with the scale in that painting as long as you remember that most pterosaurs weren't huge. This croc's skull is about 2.5 feet long, with the jaws being a little over half that length, and there were plenty of pterosaurs with wingspans of a meter or less, especially during the Jurassic and earlier. It was only when the birds started diversifying in the Cretaceous, taking over all the small-flyer niches, that the remaining pterosaurs were forced to become giants.

I don't doubt that there were a large number of species of small flying dinosaurs but the public conception is that most flying dinosaurs were approximately man-sized and National Geographic knows this, I feel the picture was deliberatly taking advantage of this perception and coupled with the godzilla reference attemping to make us think this creature was far larger than it actually was.

Re:Size is relative

[Colin Douglas Howell]

I don't doubt that there were a large number of species of small flying dinosaurs but the public conception is that most flying dinosaurs were approximately man-sized and National Geographic knows this, I feel the picture was deliberatly taking advantage of this perception and coupled with the godzilla reference attemping to make us think this creature was far larger than it actually was.

Good point, and you may be right about their motives. It certainly seems like they're trying to hype this in order to sell magazines, thus getting "maximum return" from their research sponsorship.

(By the way, calling pterosaurs "flying dinosaurs" is a misnomer. They were only distantly related to dinosaurs, without a great deal of common structure, and probably having a shared ancestor back in the early Triassic. The expression "flying dinosaurs" is much better applied to birds, which have a lot of shared characteristics with dinosaurs and which are apparently descended from predatory dinosaurs of the Jurassic.)

(Yes, I'm a hopeless pedant and a paleontology nut. :)

ready for my close-up, Mr. DeMille...

[moviepig.com]

...a ferocious predator, feeding on other marine reptiles and large sea creatures...

...and yet, National Geo's dramatic illustration shows the fearsome beast springing from the waves to snatch down a flying ptero-whatzis. I guess a photo-op is a photo-op...

Only four meters?

[darklordyoda]

I move that we change the name of the animal from "Godzilla" to "Godzuki". Then promptly try to forget it.

Gar ?

[cyber_rigger]

I wonder if it's related to a gar?

http://www.sdafs.org/laafs/Amazing%20Fish%20Pictur es/Big%20Alligator%20Gar%2009-03.JPG

Again and Again Nature points out the folly of man

[skeptictank]

GRODZILLA!

It's small compared to modern crocs

[skeptictank]

It only measured 13 feet from head to tail. Steve's baby wrestles with crocs bigger than that.

This a pathetic attempt to get some funding so the researchers won't have to go back to making fries.

Re:It's small compared to modern crocs

[davetv]

Here in Queensland Australia a four metre crocodile is not uncommon at all, they get bigger than that.

Re:This was on Digg yesterday...

[saskboy]

And I too will continue to read Slashdot until they post:

Ancient 'Godzilla'-like Slashdot Dupe Discovered

Not very exceptional

[Belseth]

The largest crocodile fossils found so far have mostly been in South America, there have been large ones found in Texas as well. The biggest so far was around 50', at last word. That would dwarf the new find. I would have said the fish shaped tail made it unique but that's not the first time for that feature. Actually sounds fairly unexceptional so far. Have to check out the NG issue and see if there's more to it. 19' to 21' is the accepted high end for salt water Crocs but there have been larger ones found. I have heard reliable stories about one just under 30' which is possible but I think that would be an extreme high end and the animal would be over 100 years old. There was a Nile found recently that I saw film of that seemed to be north of 20', I believe they called it Gustav. I've seen film of 19' crocs and this one was considerably larger. Personally I think it was well north of 20', not 25' or 30' but definately bigger than 20'. At first they thought it was over 60 but later decided it was closer to 35 which gave it a lot of growth potential. It would seem to support the idea that the real high end is 25' to 30'. I doubt many ever reached that size given most simply don't live long enough. Even Gustav seems to have died around the time it was filmed and hasn't been seen since. The poor animal even had machine gun wounds on it's side. I'd be surprised if any currently alive were over 21'.

Re:Not very exceptional

[krayzkrok]

Actually, the largest fossil crocodyliforms known are 35 to 40 feet long (eg. Sarcosuchus imperator, Deinosuchus, Rhamphosuchus) based on a very small number of specimens found.

As for Gustav, I seriously doubt he's over 20 feet long based on photos, video and descriptions I've seen. I've spoken with colleagues who've seen him and they acknowledge that he's a very big Nile Croc, but not a shred of evidence that he's anywhere near the monster size that's been mentioned like 25 feet. I hope someone catches him and proves me wrong, but Nile's greater than 17 feet are exceptional events. As far as I know he's still alive, but efforts to capture him have halted since the civil war in the region made it too dangerous to work there.

Croc sizes seem to go up by 5 to 10 feet with each retelling!

question

[Adult film producer]

why do some ancient bones like this fossilize and others just whither away into dust? I'm guessing the latter happens more often than not otherwise there would be bones just about everywhere from every creature.

Re:question

[flandery]

>why do some ancient bones like this fossilize and others just whither away into dust?

Fossilization is actually a rare occurrence because natural materials tend to decompose. In order for an organism to be fossilized, the remains normally need to be covered by sediment as soon as possible. However there are exceptions to this, such as if an organism becomes petrified or comes to rest in an anoxic environment such as at the bottom of a lake. There are several different types of fossils and fossilization processes.

Taken from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fossile

Re:This was on Digg yesterday...

[Monkofdoom]

It may be 4m in size but i still wouldn't want it sneaking up on me. Who knows maybe this is a baby :s

Noodles

[Old Wolf]

Reportedly, the beast was discovered after a search began after a tipoff from a Japanese man on his deathbed

A croc with fins and a fish tail...

[batquux]

Can someone explain the Godzilla comparison to me?

I'm recovering, but...

[MattW]

I still thought of this.

But

[$RANDOMLUSER]

Have they alerted Toyko?

AAAAEEEEEEEIIIIIIII the soldiers have failed to stop Gogirra!

Gomek was much bigger

[larrya]

Gomek was a large croc captured in the Amazon and bought by Arthur Jones, inventor of the Nautilus machines. It was transferred to the Alligator Farm in St. Augustine FL. It was nearly 7 meters long.

I saw it before it died a few years ago. Really BIG.
Lots of sturdy security fencing around it to prevent it from snatching a tourist. You could see it from underwater through plate glass. It's mouth was big enough to hold the whole me.

Re:Gomek was much bigger

[krayzkrok]

Gomek was 17.9 feet long (5.46 m) when he died. I know - I measured him! He was an awesome croc. George Craig still has Oscar at Green Island in Queensland. Oscar was caught with Gomek, and was less than 17 feet at the time. Now he's bigger than Gomek was by all appearances, but nobody is game to measure him!

Seriously, though

[s388]

the NG article is absurd. i generally find popular science writing to be pretty terrible, but this is just pathetic.

4 meters. and they're calling it godzilla?

"Fossils from a real-life sea monster--a massive crocodile-like species--have been unearthed in Patagonia, Argentina. The animal likely measured 13 feet (4 meters) long from nose to tail."

a MASSIVE SEA MONSTER? it's 13 feet. there was a 14-foot alligator practically in my grandparents backyard a few years ago. big whoop.

this is probably the single-most bizarre distortion i've ever seen any popular science/nature magazine. ever. i'd still respect NG if they talked about the actual significance of the new creature, if it has any; at least to my senses it seems notable for its non-reptilian properties.

i mean this is even more ridiculous than the article about the giant squid, which showed a single live picture, and then the photo-series gradually degraded into.... pieces of dead squid, then to paintings of fictional monsters, then to photographs of the scientists, and then to shoddy line-drawing maps of the sea of japan. it was like a bad dream: with each picture in the series, i swore to myself that it couldn't possibly get any worse, yet it kept surpassing itself.

and this..... THIS 15-foot "GODZILLA".... this, this is worse. god have mercy on us all.

the links and facts about some truly monstrous reptiles posted above by other commentators here are infinitely more worth of our attention.

Re:Seriously, though

[AndroidCat]

there was a 14-foot alligator practically in my grandparents backyard a few years ago.

I wouldn't call a 14 foot alligator in the backyard very practical -- unless they get a lot of god-botherers and salesmen?

obligatory

[StarvingSE]

I, for one, welcome our new Fossilized Ancient 'Godzilla' Crocodile overlords.

Obligatory Blue Oyster Cult Quote...

[Khyber]

With a purposeful grimace and a terrible sound
He pulls the spitting high tension wires down

Helpless people on a subway train
Scream bug-eyed as he looks in on them

He picks up a bus and he throws it back down
As he wades through the buildings toward the center of town

Oh no, they say he's got to go
Go go godzilla, yeah
Oh no, there goes tokyo
Go go godzilla, yeah

Not as cool as the supercroc

[vaccum pony]

http://www.supercroc.com/delegates/yolanda.htm

4 Meters?

[POds]

I wouldnt be surprised to see a 4 meter salty up round North NT or QLD, Australia. 3 meters is probably average. 4 Meters should be attainable.

Re:4 Meters?

[POds]

In fact...

The largest species of crocodile in the world is Crocodylus porosus, the saltwater or estuarine crocodile. In fact, this is the largest living reptile in the world, bar nil. Snake afficionados may argue that there are longer snakes, but none combine both length (over 6 metres) and body mass (over 1.5 tonnes) to reach such large overall sizes like the saltwater crocodile can.

Big Croc

Burt, in the photograph above, is a captive crocodile in Darwin, Australia. He's over 16 feet (4.9 m) long, which is close to the average maximum size for saltwater crocodiles.

Would you believe the largest saltwater crocodile ever reported was 10.1 m (33.1 feet)?

------

So in wrapping up... ooowww lets all tremble with fear at the might ancient crocodile. The croc's of today would eat him for breakfast!

Go you modern day crocs!!!

Re:4 Meters?

[sagenumen]

Would you believe the largest saltwater crocodile ever reported was 10.1 m (33.1 feet)?

Yes, I would. He ate Captain Hook's hand.

What kills me...

[stephencrane]

...is that THIS is what they waste the 'Godzilla' appellation on? A weird looking crocodile ancestor? Give me a break. This a slap in the face to all those poor hapless Japanese people who have lost their lives in the many senseless monster attacks since the end of WWII. I would have hoped that fossil geeks would have the wherewithal to save the Big G label for something that could have eaten a T-rex onehanded. Kids these days.

tv show

[zogger]

I love that guy! He had the neatest true raw uncut adventure show ever on TV. Cheap but slick low budget production, just some dudes with cameras out in the jungle. You could just tell they got in hairy situations all the time. They always packed heat, and had the neatest wild critters. I bet the stuff they DIDN'T show was pretty wild! The TV show ran back in the early 60s and was called Wild Cargo. Every episode they brought some example out, there was this wimpy guy who acted as the straight foil, and Arthur would spring something nasty on him, like "here, pet this wild 10 inch long poisonous amazon jumping spider", or something like that.

Anyway, if it is the same croc, I remember reading about all the BS he had to go through to bring it in.

Pffftt

[Archades54]

theres 3-4 meter crocs at the zoo where i live, i was 2 meters away from one with the fence open when i was a child, the trainer used a garden rake to "pat it", not to mention they use to sit on the thing....cept a few years later one of the trainers lost his arm after it deathrolled it outa the socket pwned

Has Slashdot hit a new High?

[POds]

Wikipedia now include templates that state certain articles have been linked to slashdot, and thus require extra attention :|

[quote]
This article has recently been linked from Slashdot (backlink).
Please keep an eye on the page history for errors or vandalism.
[/quote]

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Estuarine/Saltwater_C rocodile

It's not 'Godzilla'...

[Hi-Nu]

it's DinoCroc!!!

Re:Evolution and Natural Design...

[shmlco]

Then you subscribe to the infinite number of gods theory?

Re:This was on Digg yesterday...

[dfjunior]

The problem here is that the only reason this particular item is news is because it's about to be featured in Nat'l Geo...

This "find" was made nine years ago.

Re:Evolution and Natural Design...

[MSBob]

This is complete nonsense and fundie gobbledygook. Go read some work by Robert Hazen or other scientists' regarding origins of life research. Not your church minister.

While there is no consensus on how the chemical reactions leading to initial living organisms occured, we have a fairly complete picture of the steps involved. Recent research shows that the odds of life forming on earth 40 billion years ago are very plausible. Some gaps remain but nothing drastic enough to negate the current scientific knowledge of the field.

Darwin's evolution has been proven time and again. I'm not even going to bother backing it. Just use Google or better go to your library and read the relevant literature. The evidence for evolution is overwhelming, crushing and undisputable. And if that wasn't enough, recent research documented (using scientific method as opposed to religious mythology) that evolution still occurs within cohorts of fruit fly populations.

Just give it up. If you have a strong set of beliefs keep them that way. Don't try to attach some pseudoscientific labels to them. Instead of being an enlightened spiritualist you'll be viewed as a dumb fundamentalist. Is that what you want?

"People should actually research things before condemning them."

Precisely.

Re:Evolution and Natural Design...

[MSBob]

oops. Typo alert! I meant 4 billion years ago, not 40, of course.

Re:Let them extract the DNA

[MSBob]

Actually some fossils that old have been found to still contain fragments of the DNA. It's rare but it does happen. It mostly depends on the permeability of the surrounding rocks. Some are so insulatory that they managed to capture some cellular structures for hundreds of millions of years. I know it's hard to comprehend but it's true.

Re:Evolution and Natural Design...

[letxa2000]

Recent research shows that the odds of life forming on earth 40 billion years ago are very plausible.

Hmmm? So how long did it take scientists in the lab to witness random organic material spontaneously form a cell wall and all necessary supporting structures?

What? They haven't seen that yet? If not, how on earth can you make the assertion that "the odds of life formating on the earth 40 (sec) billion years ago are very plausible?" Sounds like you know what the odds are? What are they?

Re:Evolution and Natural Design...

[MSBob]

There hasn't been an artificial bacteria in a lab tube because we have no genetic material (most likely RNA) from that time period. So we don't know what the genetic "program" was like 4 billion years ago. The modern DNA is far too complex to create in a lab. But it's not a hard stretch to imagine that genetic info was orders of magnitude simpler than the DNA of even the simplest microbes of today.

All necessary molecules for primitive life have been created through simple experiments in the labs. Those experiments were surprisingly simple yet yielded a lot of interesting molecules (see Miller et al). Granted, we don't know what type of reactions led to the exact forms of life that we observe today but we can builds something that is pretty close to the most primitive life forms. For example we can now create fully artificial viruses in a lab environment. In time we'll learn how to add self replication without a host cell. There's nothing "magical" about single cell organisms. Within the next couple of decades we'll likely have fully functioning single cell organisms capable of metabolism and self replication created purely from inorganic molecules.

About these pictures

[Mahler]

Didn't they supposed to have feathers? Remember the Giant Chick overlords comment?

First hobbits and now Godzilla? : /

[decken]

Is this a recent trend, sticking newly-discovered fossils with nicknames from popculture, or do I have overly-nostalgic memories of a past where short people weren't automatically Hobbits and aquatic lizards weren't called Godzilla? Color me unimpressed with recent paleontology research/reporting.

Re:First hobbits and now Godzilla? : /

[AndroidCat]

Just wait until they dig up a furry dinosaur and call it the Hairy Pottersaurus...

Re:Let them extract the DNA

[LBt1st]

God, obviously he wasn't serious. That shit was funny.

Re:This was on Digg yesterday...

[BushCheney08]

A paper appeared in the Nov 11 issue of Science about this guy. That's why it's making the rounds right now. Nat'l Geog helped fund the research and coordinated with Science to be able to have it as their cover story next month.

Great idea!!

[commodoresloat]

Yes! Maybe we can clone a bunch of these creatures and make a theme park!! What could possibly go wrong?

Re:Evolution and Natural Design...

[Artifakt]

I know this makes me a dumb fundie, but All the necessary molecules for life most definitely haven't been created in labs, and Darwin's own arguements for natural selection do make it a very hard stretch to imagine that early genetic info evolved into the current encoding scheme.

If you check the molecular genesis experiments, in the early stages the researchers who actually did them expressed great confidence that continuing the bombardment of early atmospheric chemicals would soon build actual proteins. As they continued to run these experiments, the goal of actual protein synthesis kept recedeing the assigned probabilities kept dropping, and it is still an illusive goal today.

Darwin predicted, among other things, that a bad grade genetic code, that allowed very frequent mutation, would actually slow down the process of natural selection. Many hard evolutionists, such as Richard Dawkins, have explained this why this should be so, in detail, and that's the standard theory, as also taught in most of the best college textbook (including the ones currently standard at all the ivy league schools, Cal Tech and MIT), not some 'wild-eyed intelligent design' book.
        That means evolution was proceeding more slowly in DNA without the advanced error correction of multicelled life forms. It also means if RNA was the precessor of DNA, evolution was proceeding more slowly again before DNA itself evolved. Whatever came before RNA made so many copying errors that evolution proceeded at a comparative snail's pace.
          Since DNA with additional error correction has been around for about 2 billion years by the fossil record, you have to cram all the earlier steps into that first two billion, because earth is only about 4 billion years old.
Ooops, we used half the time available on the most recent step, but each earlier step supposedly took tens or hundreds of times longer than its successor. By actually calculating just how sloppy RNA is compared to DNA with error correction, we seem to be missing about 400 trillion years needed to make the theory work.

41m?

[Morky]

That article looks a bit wonky. The skull was only 1.3 meters. That would be a pin head on a 41m croc.

Other breaking news from 135M years ago!

[AndroidCat]

Dispite rumours of a patch-up, members of the supercontinent Godwanaland have officially disbanded and gone their seperate ways. "It's not that I don't like them, we've just drifted apart," said ex-member Australia, "I just need to do my own thing for a while, evolve my own style. I might bump into the rest sometime later on, it's a small world." Not all members of the supercontinent have taken the break-up so well. India was last seen driving north at high-speed toward Laurasia. "Could be a bad accident if 'e doesn't slow down," one observer said.

Re:Please follow my logic...

[AndroidCat]

Patagonia was, at the time, part of the supercontinent of Godwanaland, which was breaking up into South America, Africa, Antactica, Australia, India and bits.

Godwanazilla

Back off people! this is the Devil's work!

[master_p]

...Kansas called and they want their 'gator back.

Crocodilian Database - large crocs

[howlatthemoon]

You can get some good information on large crocs here:

Which is the largest species of crocodile?

According to this site Gomek is a saltie from Papua New Guinea, which made more sense to me. There are a couple species of crocodilian South America that get large, but not as consistently.

Re:This was on Digg yesterday...

[hikingpete]

I'm not sure about that whole 'intelligent commentors' thing...

It's rare but it does happen.

[Anon.Pedant]

Really? You say that with such authority, as if it were a fact. Can you provide me with a citation for a single credible instance of recovery of DNA fragments from stony fossils of that age? The oldest non-controversial (ie. replicated by other labs, not attributable to contamination) DNA recovery that I can find in the literature is 400 thousand years, in frozen plant tissues. (Science. 2003 May 2;300(5620):791-5)

Anything older than that is extremely controversial in the field. For recent reviews see:

    Willerslev E, Cooper A.
    Ancient DNA.
    Proc Biol Sci. 2005 Jan 7;272(1558):3-16.

    Hebsgaard MB, Phillips MJ, Willerslev E.
    Geologically ancient DNA: fact or artefact?
    Trends Microbiol. 2005 May;13(5):212-20.

When you say that fossils "capture" some cellular structures, you are correct in the sense that the morphology of the cellular (and subcellular) structures is sometimes captured by mineral replacement, but the actual biomolecules are long gone. There has been one recent report of soft tissue preservation in T. Rex fossils (Science. 2005 Mar 25;307(5717):1952-5.), but the biochemical analysis has not yet been published. Commenting on the possibility of recovering DNA from these "tissues", the first author of the paper says that "the likelihood is probably next to none."

-- Anonymous Pedant

Re:Evolution and Natural Design...

[MSBob]

As they continued to run these experiments, the goal of actual protein synthesis kept recedeing the assigned probabilities kept dropping, and it is still an illusive goal today.

What about the protenoid world of Sidney Fox? It's not exactly like modern day protein structures but it can definitely be dubbed "protein like" structures. Just because Fox made some whacky claims later on in his career, his early work on protein structures is peer reviewed and can't be dismissed.

Re:Evolution and Natural Design...

[Anon.Pedant]

The error density in this short post is high, but I'll restrict my comments to two points.

1. "For example we can now create fully artificial viruses in a lab environment"

Yeah, but the crucial steps of protein synthesis, replication, and packaging are performed by
a living host cell. This is "fully artificial"? Also the DNA sequences are designed by a living scientist, based on modifications of existing viral sequences. This has no relevance at all to abiogenesis of early life.

2. "In time we'll learn how to add self replication without a host cell."
Really, how? In several billion years of viral evolution, viruses have never acquired the ability to replicate without a host cell. What mechanism do you propose? Can you tell me of a single lab that is working on this?

Where do you get your facts?

P.S. I think you are confusing "synthesis" with "abiogenesis". The fact that scientists may soon be able to design and synthesize living organisms from inorganic molecules in a lab is completely irrelevant to the question of the origins of life, unless they can show how it could have happened under natural conditions without the lab, and without the scientists. At present this is unknown. Not unknowable, just unknown. All current scientific explanations of abiogenesis are simply informed speculation.

I don't think its wise to try to counter the arguments of creationists with specious arguments, made-up facts, and gross exagerations of what is actually known. That's their specialty.

-- Anonymous Pedant

Proteinoid world

[Anon.Pedant]

"It's not exactly like modern day protein structures"

I'll say. These are just random amino acid chains with no definite sequence, structure, or function. In other words, they lack all of the essential elements of proteins that make them building blocks of living things. This is just chemistry. There is no information processing here, and information processing is at the heart of life.

-- Anonymous Pedant

Re:Proteinoid world

[Artifakt]

Just my personal take, but it seems like the experimenters acomplished something that was maybe a few percent of the process, and just maybe even less, and thought they had done by far ALL the harder parts. It's not that their data isn't meaningful or interesting. It's still a more significant experiment than a lot of typical science, but outside the body of the work itself they handwaved over the parts they hadn't gotten yet, and said in effect "this part is relatively trivial, and doesn't need much more explanation". When I first read up on the original experiment, I thought this came from some of the science popularizing type press, but reading the abstracts and even the papers directly shows many of the same problems, especially in the methodology and conclusions sections.

Re:Proteinoid world

[MSBob]

nformation processing is at the heart of life.

Or is the metabolic process the heart of life? That is an almost philosophical questions. Because it is certain that Fox's structures possessed metabolic capabilities. Of course they didn't have any DNA or RNA structure encoding the replication process BUT there is no clear specimen to tell us WHAT that information processing loooked like. Thus the job of replicating it is guesswork.

This is just chemistry

That is a tenuous statement.. It is certainly not life but it seems to be quite a bit more than chemistry. There is self assembly and self replication involved. That's a little more involved than "pure chemistry".

Re:Proteinoid world

[Anon.Pedant]

"Because it is certain that Fox's structures possessed metabolic capabilities."

No, it is only certain that they possesed *catalytic* capabilities. "Metabolism" is by definition a property of living things, so you can't use it as evidence of life, without circular reasoning. This is the same trap that ID proponents fall into with their use of the term "design".

I don't believe that any definition can completely distinguish "life" from "non-life", but that isn't the question. The question is, how did the things that are now incontrovertibly alive actually originate. Whether Fox's structures satisfy one or another definition of "life" is not evidence of whether life actually originated from them.

My position is that scientists do not know how life originated, and that Fox's results are a long way from an explanation.

Improper name, some will take it seriously

[gr8dude]

I think they're making a big mistake by naming it Godzilla. This is non-scientific behaviour. I mean, some people will actually believe that Godzilla [the movie character] existed; and if you tell them that it was just a movie, they'll bring you a book or an issue of Scientific Whatever, where it written, black on white, that Godzilla existed, was 13 feet long, and fed with aquatic beings.

And there will be no way you could prove them wrong because "Scientific Whatever is obviously smarter than you are"....

Now, wait a sec, isn't it the exact same thing we have with religion? Some guy[s] wrote a [series of] book[s] thousands of years ago, and now most of the people take that as absolute truth, without checking the facts.
And since those who watched Godzilla seriously outnumber those who really studied the bible... something tells me that this idea about a 'real Godzilla' will definitely stick.

There is a larger croc alive in captivity

[Mostly a lurker]

The crocodle farm and zoo at Samut prakan in Thailand has a 6m specimin called "Yai" (Thai for "big"). Weighing in at 1,114kg, it is recognised by the Guiness book of World Records. Frankly, it looks pretty sleepy and overfed in its photos. I still would be careful around it.

Re:There is a larger croc alive in captivity

[chawly]

Enough there for a pair of boots and a hand-bag. Good job it was only chickens and fish for his birthday - bad deal if it was hung-over.

Re:Evolution and Natural Design...

[letxa2000]

All necessary molecules for primitive life have been created through simple experiments in the labs.

Even if true, the molecules are a small fragment of what's needed. What's more interesting than the chemistry is how these molecules just got together and formed a functioning cell, a cell wall, etc. So many functions of the cell are such that it either has to all be there or none of it can work. THAT'S the challenge, that's the "holy grail" for science in terms of explaining the origin of life--not explaining the proteins or molecules, but what logically must be a spontaneous creation of a functioning cell.

To say that creating the "necessary molecules" for primitive life is anywhere near a sufficient explanation for the origin of life is like saying that someone was able to build a hammer so we now have an explanation of how a 100-story skyscraper is built. The hammer might be a tool used to build the skyscraper, but it doesn't itself really explain how the skyscraper is built... and there is no implication that the hammer alone is of any use unless something intelligent puts it to use.

Re:Let them extract the DNA

[my baby]

So how do I do it?