Top Ten: Extinct Sea Monsters (Part 3 of 5)

 5.  Elasmosaurus - Next up on our trip across time is Elasmosaurus.  One of the largest of the Plesiosaurs ever discovered, Elasmosaurus grew up to 46 feet long, which was about half neck.  Equipped with a fairly small head, Elasmosaurus would have been incapable of going after large prey, so it would have mostly stuck with fish.  Elasmosaurus lived during the Late Cretaceous, a time when much of North America was "Beneath the Waves," under something that we call the "Western Interior Seaway."   Remains of this animal were first uncovered in Kansas, but it almost certainly swam all over the seaway, including in Colorado.

6.  Dunkleosteus - Dunkleosteus, a creature we talked about a few weeks ago in our post about the Coelacanth, is another fascinating animal.  Almost thirty-five feet in length, Dunkleosteus was a member of the Placoderms, a group of armored fish that were only around for about 50 MYA.  A long time, to be sure, but not very long compared to the 400 million year reign of the sharks.  While the Placoderms themselves lived during the Silurian and Devonian Periods, they went extinct during the transition to the Carboniferous Period, at the end of the Devonian.  Dunkleosteus fossils have been discovered in North America, Poland, Belgium, and Morocco.

 COMING UP:

7.  Archelon
8.  Leedsichthys
9.  Tanystropheus
10. Tylosaurus

This post is part of the "Top Ten: Extinct Sea Monsters" series.  For the rest of the posts in this series, click HERE.  

A Look Ahead, Fun Fact 8/3/2012

First off, check out today's post about the tapir, down below!

Next, I decided to spice our "Looks Ahead" up a little, each week I would add in a fun fact or something similar, that I didn't think I would have enough information to devote an entire post to.  So here is your fun fact!

FUN FACT:  For the first season of "Star Wars: The Clone Wars," the popular animated TV show in the same franchise of the classic movies, the producers decided to create a new planet for the premiere episode.  They settled on a small moon that was covered in coral, but no water; somehow, the moon had been drained of its oceans.  They decided to call the moon "Rugosa," after an extinct order of coral, commonly called "horn coral." 

This horn-shape, unique among coral, lived a long time ago, but not in a galaxy far, far away: before the dinosaurs, in fact!  They survived for an incredibly long amount of time, though, from the mid-Ordovician Period (~488 MYA) through to the Late Permian Period, thriving through the Silurian, Devonian and Carboniferous Periods as well.  Although I couldn't find any official confirmation, I assume that the horn-coral went extinct because of the "Great Dying," or the mysterious Permian Extinction, but I am not positive, so don't quote me on that.


Now here's what we have in store for this week:
(4) Saturday:  Ginger Kathrens, Cloud, and the Wild Horses of the Montana Rockies
(5) Sunday:  Animal Spotlight:  The Okapi
(6) Monday:  The Making of Planet Earth:  The Snow Leopard
(7) Tuesday:  Animal Spotlight:  The Red Panda
(8) Wednesday: What Is It?
(9) Thursday:  Animal Spotlight:  The Coati
(10) Friday:  Forget Biker Gangs: The River Otters of India