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Originally posted by dmorgan
It would be so damn cool if dinosaurs were still around today. The witness accounts are interesting but it's only evidence, no proof.
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The strange-looking coelacanth is one of the oldest species of fish in the world. It is considered by many to be an actual living fossil.
Known scientifically as Latimeria chalumnae, this fish was thought to have been extinct since the end of the cretaceous period over 65 million years ago. Fossils of the coelacanth have been found that date back over 350 million years. But, against all odds, in 1938, a fisherman actually caught a live coelacanth off the coast of South Africa.
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If there is one place on earth that could be home to a prehistoric flying monster, it is Papua New Guinea. These islands to the north of Australia are the closest thing to a real "lost world" and eyewitnesses here claim that a terrifying monster is circling above them. Natives call this creature the "Demon Flyer," but its twenty-foot wingspan, gray leathery skin and crested head appear to be only one thing--a living pterosaurs. Ancient sea charts made by early explorers in the sixteenth century show that they saw pterosaur-like animals and warned mariners of these legendary monsters. Paleontologists, however, are doubtful and suggest that a more likely explanation is a yet to be discovered species of giant bat. Whichever theory is correct there is something here that has reportedly killed locals and may have been caught on tape by a western witness.
Source
The discovery is an example of what scientists call the "Lazarus effect," a situation when an animal known only through the fossil record is found living.
Perhaps the best known example of the Lazarus effect is the coelacanth, a lobe-finned fish discovered off the coast of South Africa that scientists thought died out at least 65 million years ago.
Most examples of the Lazarus effect in mammals, though, only go back 10,000 years or so.
"It is an amazing discovery and it's the coelacanth of rodents," said study coauthor Mary Dawson of the Carnegie Museum of Natural History. "It's the first time in the study of mammals that scientists have found a living fossil of a group that's thought to be extinct for roughly 11 million years. That's quite a gap. Previous mammals had a gap of only a few thousand to just over a million years."
Once thought to be extinct for MILLIONS of years, yet it is still alive and well....