An article in the journal Pal­ae­on­tol­ogy for 26 September describes the skull of a monstrous prehistoric seabird dated as some 50 million years old. The bird is interesting in being the size of a small airplane and having a mouth full of unbird-like spiky teeth. It is known as Da­sor­nis, a bony-toothed bird, or pela­gor­nithid, and was disco­vered in the Lon­don Clay that underlies much of Lon­don, Essex and north­ern Kent in south­east­ern UK.

“By to­day’s stan­dards these were pret­ty bi­zarre an­i­mals, but per­haps the strang­est thing about them is that they had sharp, tooth-like pro­jec­tions along the cut­ting edges of the beak,” said Ger­ald Mayr of the Ger­man Senck­en­berg Re­search In­sti­tute and au­thor of the re­port.

With a wingspan of some 15 foot (five metres), Dasornis is similar in habits to the Albatross but 40 percent bigger.

Said Mayr:

No liv­ing birds have true teeth—which are made of enam­el and den­tine—be­cause their dis­tant an­ces­tors did away with them more than 100 mil­lion years ago, probably to save weight and make fly­ing eas­ier.

But the bon­y-toothed birds, like Da­sor­nis, are un­ique among birds in that they rein­vented tooth-like structures by evolv­ing these bony spikes.

These birds probably skimmed across the sur­face of the sea, snap­ping up fish and squid on the wing. With only an or­di­nary beak these would have been dif­fi­cult to keep hold of, and the pseudo-teeth evolved to prevent meals slip­ping away.

Seems like a rather dodgy description of the evolutionary process to me, especially coming from a scientist — but I know what he meant.

• Source: World Science
• The picture is an artist’s impression of Dasornis emuinus. (Sen­cken­berg Re­search In­sti­tute and Na­tur­al His­tory Mu­seum)
  

Great picture, eh?

Source: August Ragone’s blog: The Good, the Bad and Godzilla

Check out all the entries here.

Here’s a news cast all about the living dead plague that has hit Hollywood, featuring the undead Michael Jackson:

The card set has a great website, with cool extras. You can even make your own zombie by mixing and matching body parts! Just click on the Monster Mash-Up link.

It just not much use for escaping from giant monsters …

Nissan unveiled the electric-powered Pivo 2 concept car in the lead-up to the 40th Tokyo Motor Show (October 26 to November 11).

Designed for urban use, the Pivo 2 features a 360-degree revolving cabin, inherited from the first-generation Pivo, allowing the driver to always face forward while driving, even when parallel parking, and to access the unique front door from any direction. The three-seat car is equipped with safety systems such as Around View Monitor (AVM), Distance Control Assist System (DCAS) and also a Robotic Agent that uses facial monitoring technology to interact with the driver.

From YouTube description.

Love the robot driver’s aid!

Astronauts bound for orbit this week will dabble in science fiction, assembling a “monstrous” two-armed space station robot that will rise like Frankenstein from its transport bed.

Putting together Dextre, the robot, will be one of the main jobs for the seven Endeavour astronauts, who are scheduled to blast off in the wee hours of Tuesday, less than three weeks after the last shuttle flight.

Read the full story here.

Thanks once again, Todd!

For more information on the JGG, check out the Wikipedia entry.