mike
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Bone belonged to ancient 6ft newt
By Paul Stokes
(Filed: 18/10/2003)
A piece of skull found embedded in a rock about to be swept out to sea has been confirmed as that of a 300 million-year-old previously unknown giant amphibian.
Dave Martill, an authority on dinosaurs, made the discovery while walking with his sons along a beach at Whitley Bay, North Tynside.
As he stepped over an 18in block of ironstone he noticed what appeared to be a piece of protruding bone.
It has now been acknowledged that the piece belongs to a 6ft-long carnivorous creature, resembling a giant newt with a wide row of teeth for predatory purposes. Given the name kyrinion martilli, the creature lived in the carboniferous era before dinosaurs existed.
Jeny Clack, a reader in palaeontology at Cambridge University, spent thousands of hours painstakingly whittling away the stone using precision intruments before being able to confirm it as belonging to a previously unknown species.
Dr Martill, a reader in palaeobiology at Portsmouth University, said: "It is on the line of evolution which gave rise to amphibians in one direction and reptiles and mammals in the other.
"The creature was a carnivorous amphibian with a walking style rather like a giant newt. It was fierce with a very wide mouthful of teeth.
"It was a tiny window of opportunity that I was on the beach before the stone was washed out to sea and that a little area of bone was peeping out of the stone which had protected the fossil."
The skull, found in 1993, is being retained at Cambridge but will eventually be taken to the Hancock Museum in Newcastle upon Tyne.
Bone belonged to ancient 6ft newt
By Paul Stokes
(Filed: 18/10/2003)
A piece of skull found embedded in a rock about to be swept out to sea has been confirmed as that of a 300 million-year-old previously unknown giant amphibian.
Dave Martill, an authority on dinosaurs, made the discovery while walking with his sons along a beach at Whitley Bay, North Tynside.
As he stepped over an 18in block of ironstone he noticed what appeared to be a piece of protruding bone.
It has now been acknowledged that the piece belongs to a 6ft-long carnivorous creature, resembling a giant newt with a wide row of teeth for predatory purposes. Given the name kyrinion martilli, the creature lived in the carboniferous era before dinosaurs existed.
Jeny Clack, a reader in palaeontology at Cambridge University, spent thousands of hours painstakingly whittling away the stone using precision intruments before being able to confirm it as belonging to a previously unknown species.
Dr Martill, a reader in palaeobiology at Portsmouth University, said: "It is on the line of evolution which gave rise to amphibians in one direction and reptiles and mammals in the other.
"The creature was a carnivorous amphibian with a walking style rather like a giant newt. It was fierce with a very wide mouthful of teeth.
"It was a tiny window of opportunity that I was on the beach before the stone was washed out to sea and that a little area of bone was peeping out of the stone which had protected the fossil."
The skull, found in 1993, is being retained at Cambridge but will eventually be taken to the Hancock Museum in Newcastle upon Tyne.