- 3121 - MONSTERS - did exist years ago? These monsters did exist at one time. Long enough to be passed on in the minds and thoughts of kids everywhere in the world, firing the childhood imaginations. What can be wrong with that?
---------------------- 3121 - MONSTERS - did exist years ago?
- Every kid grows up with monsters. The first time you go swimming and jump into that dark water you envision something coming up from the deep and grabbing you. After a while the swimming hole becomes a safe haven but the initial fear is in the back of your head.
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- Whether it is created by fairy tales, science fiction movies, library books or campfire stories we all have been indoctrinated to believe in monsters.
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- Part of our image comes from the dinosaurs of 100 million years ago. The giant skeletons are every where. Many artists have put flesh and blood on to these old bones creating pictures that stir the imagination. There is always enough mystery to suggest that monsters even exist today. Do they?
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- Scientists working in Patagonia, South America, found remains of a 13-foot beast with four-inch teeth. The creature was nick-named, Godzilla. It is a distant relative of today's crocodiles and lived about 135 million years ago.
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- The scientific name is Dakosaurus Adiniensis. It was 13 feet long, had a massive 18-inch-long jaw with interlocking 4-inch teeth. It is a long-lost relative of the crocodile, but, this one had fins.
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- Godzilla was very unusual, because other marine crocodiles that were around at the same time had very delicate features, long, skinny snouts and many needle-like teeth for catching small fish and mollusks. But this croc was just the opposite. It had a short snout, and large teeth with serrated edges. It was definitely a predator.
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- There were many types of crocodiles around 135 million years ago when Dakosaurus roamed the sea. Some of them may have even been his prey. None were as big. And, none had such a short, stout snout or so few large teeth. Based on the size of its teeth, the beast probably fed on other sea-going reptiles and big prey rather than fish and mollusks like most other crocs of his time.
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- Since men first took to sea, stories of fearsome giant squid have haunted those brave- enough to venture beyond dry land. Every kid has seen pictures in books showing huge many-tentacled leviathans attacking sailors on the open ocean and dragging them to their watery deaths.
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- As strange as all this sounds biologists have actually verified the existence of these true sea monsters. It is the mysterious and elusive giant squid, Architeuthis. Dead specimens periodically wash up on beaches, most often in Newfoundland and New Zealand.
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- The largest giant squid specimen, found in New Zealand, was estimated to be 65 feet long.
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- Japanese zoologists became the first to see and film a giant squid at depth. The creature was 26 feet long and was photographed at a depth of 2,953 feet.
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- Huge, unidentified masses of flesh have occasionally washed up on beaches throughout the world. These finds, often called "globsters," are obviously flesh, yet they had decayed so badly that they lack bones or distinguishing features.
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- One classic globster washed ashore in 1896, when giant waves tossed a massive fleshy corpse on a beach at St. Augustine, Florida. The rubbery, six-foot-high blob was examined by a local naturalist, who initially speculated that it was likely from a giant octopus far larger than any previously seen.
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- Many other such blobs have washed ashore, including one in Chile in July 2003 and another in Newfoundland in 2001. Controversy and mystery surrounded the creatures for decades. More recently biologists using microscopic and biochemical DNA analyses have shown that these globsters were nothing more than the collagenous mass of whale blubber.
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- So far, all the sea monsters that science has found have either been extinct for millions of years or are known, but previously misidentified, creatures. Until hard evidence surfaces, truly unknown sea monsters will remain in the realm of fantasy and fiction.
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- Then there is the Komodo dragon. It is a big enough lizard today but it has a distant relative that was much stockier and shorter than today’s Komodo Its name was Megalania Prisca and it grew to lengths of up to 30 feet and weighed nearly 1,000 pounds, making it the largest lizard the world has ever seen.
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- Megalania roamed the Australian wilderness during the last Ice Age, and could ambush creatures twice its size and 10 times its own weight, killing them with its curved serrated teeth and large claws. It is very appropriate then that in Latin, its name translates to “ancient giant butcher."
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- This week the theaters open with the movie King Kong. King Kong is a mythical ape yet a real gigantic ape standing 10 feet tall and weighing up to 1,200 pounds has been discovered. The giant ape lived alongside humans for over a million years, according to a new study. Fortunately for the early humans, the huge primate's diet consisted mainly of bamboo.
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- Scientists have known about Giantopithecus Blackii since the accidental discovery of some of its teeth on sale in a Hong Kong pharmacy about 80 years ago. While the idea of a giant ape piqued the interest of scientists and Bigfoot hunters around the world, it was unclear how long ago this beast went extinct.
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- Precise dating of just a handful of teeth and a set of jawbones has since determined that this ape, the largest primate ever, roamed Southeast Asia for nearly a million years before the species died out 100,000 years ago during the Pleistocene period.
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- By this time, humans had existed for a million years along side these giant apes. Studies of the teeth reveal that the giant ape was an herbivore, and bamboo was probably its favorite meal. The crown molar of this ape was one inch across.
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- Gigantopithecus died out long ago yet Bigfoot, Sasquatch, and Yeti enthusiasts believe that this ape is the source of tales of giant, hairy beasts still roaming the woods to this day.
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- There have been cases in which creatures were first discovered by their fossil remains and later found living, such as the Coelacanth, a type of fish thought to have died out millions of years ago until it was discovered swimming off the coast of Africa in 1938. It could be that Bigfoot is a giant ape still surviving in the woods of the northwest. At least the myth still helps the tourist industry.
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- Enjoy the movies and repeat the tales. These monsters did exist at one time. Long enough to be passed on in the minds and thoughts of kids everywhere in the world, firing the childhood imaginations. What can be wrong with that?
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- April 12, 2021 MONSTERS - did exist years ago? 601 3121
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