08年十大恐龙与化石发现 TOP TEN DINOSAUR & FOSSIL FINDS

6. 新的‘海怪’物种确认 New "Sea Monster" Species Identified

这个恐龙时代的食肉爬行类新种，在加拿大的深矿中被发现。这同样也是同种动物的出土化石中保存的最完全的。

 March 26, 2008—The remarkably well-preserved fossil of a dinosaur-era sea creature found in a Canadian mine is turning out to be a gold mine for paleontologists. The Cretaceous-period reptile, dubbed Nichollsia borealis, is not only a new species—it represents a whole new genus, scientists announced on March 20. It's also one of the oldest and most complete plesiosaur fossils ever unearthed in North America. Plesiosaurs were carnivorous reptiles that roamed the seas between about 205 million to 65 million years ago. Mine workers found the intact creature about 200 feet (60 meters) deep in a surface mine in Alberta in 1994. The Syncrude company extracts oil from the mine's sandy soil. A "tomb" of sandstone preserved the 8.5-foot-long (2.6-meter-long) creature almost perfectly—unlike other plesiosaur fossils that are often found in porous shale. The fossil ended up at the Royal Tyrrell Museum in Drumheller, Alberta, where University of Calgary paleontologists Patrick Druckenmiller and Anthony Russell recently ran 3-D CT scans of its braincase. The scans and other analyses of the reptile have provided more detail than for any other plesiosaur ever found, they said. The newfound reptile also gave them a window into an ancient seaway that once cut through North America and teemed with marine life.