Giant Prehistoric Fish Had a Fierce Bite
Animal ‘Blows Sharks Out of the Water,’ Scientist Says
By Will Dunham, Reuters
WASHINGTON (Nov. 28) – It was the first super predator of the ancient seas and its fearsome, jagged jaws still inspire awe 400 million years later.
The armor-plated fish Dunkleosteus was a 33-foot, four-ton monster that terrorized other marine life in the Devonian Period, which spanned 415 million to 360 million years ago.
While lacking true teeth, Dunkleosteus used two long, bony blades in its mouth to snap and crush nearly any creature unfortunate enough to encounter it.
Scientists at the Field Museum in Chicago and the University of Chicago decided to test Dunkleosteus’s reputation for wielding some of the most powerful jaws ever on Earth, creating a biomechanical model to simulate its jaws.
They came away impressed.
In research published on Tuesday in Britain’s Royal Society journal Biology Letters, they said the big fish’s bite packed 11,000 pounds of force.
The full fascinating story can be read here.
A better number cruncher than Fritz!!
I wonder that with such a huge advantage of survival, how and why did it die out?
Gabor
do people try reconstructing animals the currently exist from their skeletons to see how close they get?
– vinay
great just great…thanks alot Susan. Now, how am I supposed to sleep tonight?
Just speculations…
Why accept these things as facts? The bones that served as ‘teeth blade’ could be inside the flesh to, no?
And how could this be the first big predator fish? What evolutionary links were surpassed then? LOL
Fake science!
“415 million to 360 million years ago” LOL ….ummm…ok
Wasn’t it 416 million years?
Science is so easy, it seems….
This is totally WRONG! And they have admitted it today. The journalist in Time did a grave error when calculating from ‘newton’ to ‘kilos’ when he studied the scientific article. It’s power is much weaker than T. Rex, not much stronger than a hyena.
If you go to answersingenesis.org, you’ll find a lot of great articles that disprove evolution. One place on the site where you can look to find some (although there are other places on the site where you can find them as well) is ‘get answers’, located near the top of the page. Also, read the book, Evolution Exposed, which is available in their book store. You’ll love how they both tear evolution apart.
Hmmm…Kasparov’s ancestors. Discovered at last!
David and his likeminded: you still think earth is flat too? Read science, not religious garbage.