Andre
May27-08, 02:50 AM
Every now and then fishermen, trawling the floor of the North Sea (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/North_Sea) for sole and plaice find things like this in their trawler nets:
http://i.pbase.com/g1/04/469504/2/97590821.Hj6ZrhEI.jpg
It's the skull and antlers of a giant deer or irish elk, which was originally thought to have died out at the end of the Pleistocene, together with the mammoths, mastodons, etc, some 11,000 years ago. However a specimen of about 7000 years old (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/1006_041006_giant_deer.html) proofs this to be false.
The guy on the picture is Dick (Sir mammoth) (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/1006_041006_giant_deer.html) Mol, who is currently packing his bags for a expedition to Siberia to investigate another stunning discovery that will likely hit the news later.
The likely age range of this fossil is 28-35,000 years, alternately it could be 6000-11,000 years, as not a single fossil is known here between those two periods. Older is unlikely or the specimen would have been (partly) mineralized. Of course carbon dating is in progress.
The house in the background is of one of those fishermen, also the owner of this fossil, in his rooms he has one of the finest private paleonthologic collections, only surpassed by that of Dick Mol, whose house is completely full whenever a visitor happens to pass by.
http://i.pbase.com/g1/04/469504/2/97590821.Hj6ZrhEI.jpg
It's the skull and antlers of a giant deer or irish elk, which was originally thought to have died out at the end of the Pleistocene, together with the mammoths, mastodons, etc, some 11,000 years ago. However a specimen of about 7000 years old (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/1006_041006_giant_deer.html) proofs this to be false.
The guy on the picture is Dick (Sir mammoth) (http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2004/10/1006_041006_giant_deer.html) Mol, who is currently packing his bags for a expedition to Siberia to investigate another stunning discovery that will likely hit the news later.
The likely age range of this fossil is 28-35,000 years, alternately it could be 6000-11,000 years, as not a single fossil is known here between those two periods. Older is unlikely or the specimen would have been (partly) mineralized. Of course carbon dating is in progress.
The house in the background is of one of those fishermen, also the owner of this fossil, in his rooms he has one of the finest private paleonthologic collections, only surpassed by that of Dick Mol, whose house is completely full whenever a visitor happens to pass by.