Largest known prehistoric predator turns out to be uniquely semi-aquatic

A replica of Spinosaurus (AFP Photo/Patrick Lin)

RT | Sep 12, 2014

You might recognize Spinosaurus, the gigantic dinosaur from Jurassic Park 3, as a fierce land predator that could dethrone the Tyrannosaurus Rex, but it now turns out the timorous beastie was also part-duck and a formidable aquatic killer as well.

"If we base the ferocious factor on the length of the animal, there was nothing that ever lived on this planet that could match this creature,” paleonthologist John R. Horner said in the film.

Though Horner was a fictional character, scientists agree that a fully grown Spinosaurus could stretch to 15 meters and weigh over 20 tons – way bigger than the largest T. Rex ever discovered.

Now, new evidence gathered in the Moroccan Sahara and published on the Science Express website suggests the ferocious creature actually roamed prehistoric rivers as well, more so than land. The place used to be a large river system.

The fossils point to a primarily aquatic existence and reveal Spinosaurus to be the first of its kind to adopt a semi-aquatic lifestyle. It was almost certainly predatory toward sharks and other large fish, and when it swam, all you could see was the large fin on its back.



“The animal we are resurrecting today is so bizarre, it’s going to force dinosaur experts to rethink many things they thought they knew about dinosaurs,” said Nizar Ibrahim, a real-life paleoanthologist at Chicago University. Although theories about this type of lifestyle for Spinosaurus have existed for some time now, the chemical signature on its teeth pointed to a marine diet, Chinese scientists discovered.

The new research is, however, more conclusive. The Spinosaurus, it turns out, is the only known dinosaur to show the following adaptations to living and hunting underwater:

- small nostrils and a crocodile-like snout and skull, to allow for breathing underwater;

- flat claws, which hint at webbed feet, ideal for paddling, the way a goose might;

- peculiar teeth for a land predator, shaped more for biting into softer prey, such as sharks and other large fish;

- an elongated neck and trunk, that allowed the creature to shift its center of mass forward (thus making walking on land much more difficult than swimming); and

- a small pelvis and short hind legs, resembling the earliest whales much more than similar land predators.

“Working on this animal was like studying an alien from outer space,” said Ibrahim, who led the new study. “It’s unlike any other dinosaur I have ever seen.”

It was first dug up in the early 20th century, but that at time scientists had fewer ways to fully study the 95-million-year-old creature. Then, the Munich museum where the fossils were kept was bombed during WWII.

There were other fossil hunts, and to discover the newer fossils, Ibrahim had to find another fossil hunter who got to the latest fossil first. Then the team set about creating a digital model of the entire skeleton, using CT scans and digital recreations of earlier specimens.

“We relied upon cutting-edge technology to examine, analyze and piece together a variety of fossils. 

For a project of this complexity, traditional methods wouldn’t have been nearly as accurate,” said Simone Maganuco, another member of the study team.

Newfound Dinosaur Sported 'Wings' on its Head

Live Science | Jun 19, 2014 | Elizabeth Palermo

This artist reconstruction reveals the
horned dinosaur Mercuriceratops Gemini,
a new species of horned dinosaur that
sported winglike ornamentation on the
sides of its skull.
Credit: Courtesy Danielle Dufault

Move over Triceratops: There's a new horned dinosaur in town, and its cranial ornamentation is even more impressive than the three-horned dinosaur the world has come to know and love.

A study of the recently discovered species, Mercuriceratops gemini, provides more details on this flashy dinosaur, which possessed not only the standard trifecta of facial horns, but also a giant, winglike frill protruding from the back of its skull.

"The butterfly-shaped frill, or neck shield, of Mercuriceratops is unlike anything we have seen before," said David Evans, co-author of the new study and curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Royal Ontario Museum in Canada, in a statement. "Mercuriceratops shows that evolution gave rise to much greater variation in horned dinosaur headgear than we had previously suspected." [See Images of a Flashy Horned Dinosaur]

The research describing the new species is based on fossil evidence collected from Montana as well as Alberta, Canada. Mercuriceratops gemini lived about 77 million years ago, during the Late Cretaceous Period, and was approximately 20 feet (6 meters) long and weighed more than 2 tons. Like Triceratops and other ceratopsid dinosaurs, Mercuriceratops was a plant-eating dinosaur, and researchers believe it had a parrotlike beak, as well as two long brow horns above its eyes.

Its headgear, though, is in a league all its own.

"Mercuriceratops took a unique evolutionary path that shaped the large frill on the back of its skull into protruding wings like the decorative fins on classic 1950s cars," said Michael Ryan, lead author of the study and curator of vertebrate paleontology at The Cleveland Museum of Natural History in Ohio, in the statement. "It definitively would have stood out from the herd during the Late Cretaceous."

The dinosaur's name, Mercuriceratops, is a combination of "Mercury" — the Roman God best known for his winged helmet — and "ceratops," a Greek word meaning "horned face." The second part of its name "gemini," is Latin for "twins" and refers to the fact that paleontologists uncovered two nearly identical specimens of the species, the first in north-central Montana and the second at the UNESCO World Heritage Site, Dinosaur Provincial Park, in Alberta, Canada.

The study detailing the two findings, published online in the journal Naturwissenschaften, focuses on skull fragments of Mercuriceratops found at each site. Originally, scientists believed the specimen they had uncovered at the Judith River Formation of Montana was simply a distorted fossil from the remains of a more common ceratopsid species. But the discovery of a nearly identical specimen collected from the Dinosaur Park Formation in Alberta suggested otherwise.

Fossils of the horned dinosaur Mercuriceratops
Gemini were discovered in Montana as well as
in a quarry in Dinosaur Provincial Park,
Alberta, Canada (shown here).
Credit: Courtesy Philip J. Currie

"The Alberta specimen confirmed that the fossil from Montana was not a pathological specimen, nor had it somehow been distorted during the process of fossilization," said Philip Currie, professor and Canada research chair in dinosaur paleobiology at the University of Alberta, in the statement. "The two fossils — squamosal bones from the side of the frill — have all the features you would expect, just presented in a unique shape." (The squamosal bone is located in the skull of vertebrates.)

As to the question of why Mercuriceratopsdeveloped such a prominent skull ornament, the researchers presented a number of possibilities.

"Horned dinosaurs in North America used their elaborate skull ornamentation to identify each other and to attract mates — not just for protection from predators," Ryan said. "The winglike protrusions on the sides of its frill may have offered male Mercuriceratops a competitive advantage in attracting mates.”

Follow Elizabeth Palermo on Twitter @techEpalermo, Facebook or Google+. Follow us @livescience, Facebook & Google+. Original article on Live Science.

Earth's magnetic flips may have triggered mass extinctions

© Victor Leshyk/NPS
Postosuchus, which went extinct in the Triassic-Jurassic
event, is seen here attacking a silesaur.

Sott.net | June 10, 2014 | Robin Wylie / Discover Magazine

At several times in Earth's history, mass extinctions have come close to wiping life out altogether. The reasons for these catastrophes are still unclear - they've been blamed on everything from asteroid impacts to cosmic ray blasts. But a new study has found that our planet itself could have a surprising hand in these disasters.

Research recently published in Earth and Planetary Science Letters suggests that reversals of the Earth's magnetic field may have sparked mass extinctions in the past by stripping oxygen from the atmosphere.

Field Flips

© Discover Magazine

The Earth's natural magnetic field, generated in the liquid outer core, spontaneously changes direction every 500,000 years or so. Known as geomagnetic reversals, these processes cause the field's north and south poles to swap places.

Normally, the Earth's magnetic field acts like a shield around the atmosphere, protecting it from the damaging effects of the solar wind (the supersonic stream of charged particles emitted by the sun​). During a geomagnetic reversal, however, the field weakens dramatically, exposing the atmosphere to the full force of the solar wind - and causing oxygen ions to be stripped off into space.

This much was already known. But in the recent study, a team led by Yong Wei of the Chinese Academy of Sciences set out to discover if the oxygen lost during geomagnetic reversals could bring about mass extinctions.

It had long been known that mass extinctions are often accompanied by both an increase in the rate of geomagnetic reversals anda decrease in atmospheric oxygen levels (one of the potential drivers of mass extinctions). The researchers' goal was to determine if geomagnetic reversals could actually have caused such oxygen loss - and therefore potentially have caused mass extinctions, too.

Oxygen Depletion

Wei and colleagues focused on the "Triassic-Jurassic" mass extinction of 200m years ago, in which up to 84% of all species on Earth perished. Independent studies had already shown that, during this extinction, the geomagnetic reversal rate doubled, and the amount of atmospheric oxygen simultaneously dropped by 9 percent. This oxygen drop is one of the possible reasons for the extinction.

Using a computer model, Wei and his team concluded that geomagetic reversals stripped at least 218 trillion tons of oxygen from the Earth's atmosphere during the Triassic-Jurassic extinction - or 4.5 percent of the total amount. This indicates that at least half of the 9 percent oxygen drop that occurred during the extinction could have been caused by geomagnetic reversals alone - more than enough, the study's authors say, to have played a major role in the die-off.

This theory may explain even deadlier mass extinctions. Study coauthor Markus Fraenz of the Max Planck Institute for Solar System Research said that the oxygen loss caused by geomagnetic reversals could also have caused the end-Permian mass extinction (also known as the "Great Dying"), in which up to 97% of all species were wiped out.

Perhaps then, alongside the meteoric collisions, supernovae explosions and volcanic eruptions - which have variously been proposed to explain mass extinctions - it's time to add another suspect. The invisible fluctuations of a physical field might not be as cinematic, but their consequences throughout history may have been just as dire.

Chinese farmer spots large number of tadpole shrimps predating dinosaurs

Press TV | Jun 2, 2014

A farmer was the first to spot the large numbers of tadpole shrimps in flooded rice paddies around the village. He believes the shrimps first appeared after an 8-magnitude earthquake in the province in 2008, but that recently they have appeared in much larger numbers. With fossilized remains of the shrimps dating back at least 165 million years, they could be called "living fossils" as they have changed very little since the ancient times. It is believed the tadpole shrimp, despite its prehistoric looks, pose no threat to human beings or crops. On the contrary, it can help to keep fresh water clean by eating weeds that might otherwise rot.

World’s oldest pyramid found in Crimea

Crimean News Agency | Aug 31, 2012

SIMFEROPIL/ AQMESCIT (QHA) - A Ukrainian scientist discovered the oldest pyramid in the world. Most interestingly, it was found in the most beautiful corner of the country, in Crimea.

As the ICTV channel reported, the finding was revealed by accident, when during his test alternative methods of finding water Ukrainian scientist Vitalii Goh discovered underground unknown object, which proved to be a giant pyramid of 45 meters in height and a length of about 72 meters. Goh said that the pyramid was built during the time of the dinosaurs.

“Crimean pyramid” has a truncated top, like a Mayan pyramid, but its appearance is more like an Egyptian. It is hollow inside, and a mummy of unknown creature is buried under the foundation.

“Under the foundation is a small body in the form of a mummy long 1.3-1.4 meters with a crown on his head.”

“There is a resonance chamber of so-called Sphinx. The pyramids were built in the era of the dinosaurs,” says the scientist in an interview with ICTV.

It remains unknown who build the pyramid.

The unique building is the oldest on the planet, says Vitalii Goh.

Aliye Bekir

QHA

Massive Dinosaur Soft Tissue Discovery In China – Includes Skin And Feathers!

The Truth | Mar 6, 2014 | Michael Snyder

A fossil bed in China that is being called “Jurassic Park” has yielded perhaps the greatest dinosaur soft tissue discovery of all time.  According to media reports, “nearly-complete skeletons” have been discovered that even include skin and feathers.  But of course if these dinosaurs are really “160 million years old”, that should be absolutely impossible.  Needless to say, this shocking discovery is once again going to have paleontologists scrambling to find a way to prop up the popular myths that they have been promoting.  What they have been telling us simply does not fit the facts.  The truth is that this latest find is even more evidence that dinosaurs are far, far younger than we have traditionally been taught.

Once upon a time, scientists believed that it would be impossible to find anything other than the hardened fossilized remains of extinct dinosaurs.  And if those dinosaurs really were millions of years old, those scientists would have been 100% correct.  But instead, we are now starting to find dinosaur soft tissue all over the place.  The following is an excerpt from a recent Daily Mail article about this new discovery in China…

Almost more impressive than the diversity of the biota is the preservation of many of the vertebrate specimens, according to the study published in the Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology.

Fossils include complete or nearly-complete skeletons associated with preserved soft tissues such as feathers, fur, skin or even, in some of the salamanders, external gills.

One is the feathered dinosaur Epidexipteryx whose soft tissues have been revealed by the use of ultraviolet light scanners.

A fossil of the salamander Chunerpeton shows not only the preserved skeleton but also its skin and external gills.

Wow.

Hopefully scientists in the west will get a chance to closely examine these soft tissue samples.

Prior to 1991, you would have been laughed out of the room if you had suggested that we might dig up the soft tissue of dinosaurs someday.

But all of that changed when Mary Schweitzer, a molecular paleontologist at North Carolina State University, did something that was absolutely unthinkable.  The following comes from an article in Smithsonian Magazine…

In 1991, Schweitzer was trying to study thin slices of bones from a 65-million-year-old T. rex. She was having a hard time getting the slices to stick to a glass slide, so she sought help from a molecular biologist at the university. The biologist, Gayle Callis, happened to take the slides to a veterinary conference, where she set up the ancient samples for others to look at. One of the vets went up to Callis and said, “Do you know you have red blood cells in that bone?” Sure enough, under a microscope, it appeared that the bone was filled with red disks. Later, Schweitzer recalls, “I looked at this and I looked at this and I thought, this can’t be. Red blood cells don’t preserve.”

Schweitzer showed the slide to Horner. “When she first found the red-blood-cell-looking structures, I said, Yep, that’s what they look like,” her mentor recalls. He thought it was possible they were red blood cells, but he gave her some advice: “Now see if you can find some evidence to show that that’s not what they are.”

What she found instead was evidence of heme in the bones—additional support for the idea that they were red blood cells. Heme is a part of hemoglobin, the protein that carries oxygen in the blood and gives red blood cells their color. “It got me real curious as to exceptional preservation,” she says.

Posted below is an excerpt from a 60 Minutes video report about her remarkable discovery…


Of course since that time, many others have also dug up dinosaur soft tissue.  At this point, more than thirty specimens have been discovered and tested, and the specimens have come from an impressive array of various dinosaurs…

The dinosaurs and other Mesozoic creatures that have yielded their biological material are hadrosaur, titanosaur, ornithomimosaur [ostrich-like dinosaurs], mosasaur, triceratops, Lufengosaurs, T. rex, and Archaeopteryx.

When Schweitzer originally made her discovery public, she was viciously attacked by other evolutionists who insisted that finding dinosaur soft tissue that was millions of years old was absolutely impossible.

And those evolutionists were right.

If the dinosaurs were really that old it would be impossible.

But now sample after sample and test after test have proven without a shadow of a doubt that we really are digging up dinosaur soft tissue.

Schweitzer and other paleontologists that are desperate to prop up their existing theories are now suggesting that “iron in the blood” could have preserved the soft tissue that we are finding for all of these millions of years.

If you believe that laughable theory, I have a bridge to sell you.

But there are a lot of people out there that are so desperate to keep believing their flawed version of “the truth” that they are actually buying it.

If you are interested in more of the technical details of this theory, you can find a more detailed explanation right here.

And of course it is not just soft tissue that scientists have to account for…

It is not just dinosaur soft tissue, either, but the presence of detectable proteins such as collagen, hemoglobin, osteocalcin, actin, and tubulin that they must account for. These are complex molecules that continually tend to break down to simpler ones.

Not only that, but in many cases, there are fine details of the bone matrix, with microscopically intact-looking bone cells (osteocytes) showing incredible detail. And Schweitzer has even recovered fragments of the even more fragile and complex molecule, DNA. This has been extracted from the bone cells with markers indicating its source such that it is extremely likely to be dinosaur DNA.

In this case, I think that it would be very appropriate to apply Occam’s razor.  The reason why we are finding dinosaur bones with soft tissue in them is because they simply are not very old.

And when we carbon date dinosaur bones, it tells us the exact same thing.

Due to the rate that it decays, there should be absolutely no measurable radioactive carbon left in anything that was once living that is greater than 100,000 years old.

So there should be absolutely no measurable radioactive carbon in dinosaur bones.

But instead, that is precisely what we find.  Here is one example…

“In June of 1990, Hugh Miller submitted two dinosaur bone fragments to the Department of Geosciences at the University in Tucson, Arizona for carbon-14 analysis. One fragment was from an unidentified dinosaur. The other was from an Allosaurus excavated by James Hall near Grand Junction, Colorado in 1989. Miller submitted the samples without disclosing the identity of the bones. (Had the scientists known the samples actually were from dinosaurs, they would not have bothered dating them, since it is assumed dinosaurs lived millions of years ago—outside the limits of radiocarbon dating.) Interestingly, the C-14 analysis indicated that the bones were from 10,000-16,000 years old—a far cry from their alleged 60-million-year-old age.”

And the truth is that radioactive carbon is being found in dinosaur bones that have been excavated all over the planet…

Real Science Radio interviewed a scientist returning from the American Geophysical Union’s conference in Singapore where his international team presented results from five respected laboratories documenting significant quantities of Carbon 14 in bones from ten dinosaurs excavated from Alaska, Europe, Texas, Montana, and China’s Gobi Desert.

Additional evidence for the young age of dinosaurs comes from the fact that we find very accurate depictions of dinosaurs in ancient artwork all over the planet.  This is something that I covered in my previous article entitled “Why Does Ancient Art Contain Depictions Of Flying Aircraft, Helicopters And Dinosaurs?”
Considering the fact that we only started digging up dinosaurs a couple hundred years ago, how did those ancient people know what they looked like?

That is something to think about.

I realize that this article is going to directly challenge things that a lot of people have believed all of their lives.

But we are never going to get anywhere if we just have blind faith in whatever the system tells us to believe.

It pays to question everything and to allow logic and reason to lead us to the truth.

So what are your thoughts on all of this?  Please feel free to share what you think by posting a comment below…

About the author: Michael T. Snyder is a former Washington D.C. attorney who now publishes The Truth. His new thriller entitled “The Beginning Of The End” is now available on Amazon.com.

Why Does Ancient Art Contain Depictions Of Flying Aircraft, Helicopters And Dinosaurs?

Why Does Ancient Art Contain Depictions Of Flying Aircraft, Helicopters And Dinosaurs?
Feb 17, 2014 | The Truth Wins | Michael Snyder

The history of our planet is far more complex than most people would dare to imagine.  According to the commonly accepted version of history that is taught in high schools and colleges all over the United States, ancient man was a very simple creature with extremely limited knowledge.  Unfortunately for those that promote this flawed version of history, archaeologists keep digging up stuff that directly contradicts it.  The truth is that there is a tremendous amount of evidence of great intellectual achievement in the ancient world.  For example, just consider the Great Pyramid of Giza.  It is a true technological marvel.  It is such a massive structure built with such extraordinary precision that modern technology is only just now starting to catch up with it.  We think that we could possibly build a similar structure today if we wanted to, but modern man has never actually constructed anything like it.  And as you will see below, the Great Pyramid of Giza is far from the only example of advanced technology in the ancient world that we find in Egypt.

Posted below is a photograph of a wall in an ancient Egyptian temple at Abydos.  Look at the hieroglyphics very carefully.

© The Truth Wins

Do you see anything strange?

Researcher Lyn Leahz wrote about these incredibly bizarre hieroglyphics the other day.  The following is what she had to say about them…

Decorating an Egyptian temple wall at Abydos are strange hieroglyphics which depict what appears to be modern day aircraft. This finding has caused much controversy among Egyptologists and archaeologists who are not sure what to think. How could people 2-3,000 years ago possibly have known about modern-day aircraft?

When Dr. Ruth Hover and her husband took a trip to the pyramids and temples of Egypt, they were shocked when they discovered, in the temple at Abydos, hieroglyphics depicting modern-day aircraft. She photographed a wall panel in a section where an overlaying panel with Egyptian hieroglyphics crumbled and fell, revealing an older panel beneath it. This older panel, shown above, contains images of what appear to be modern-day technology—a helicopter, a submarine, a glider, and another unknown type of aircraft (some believe resemble the Hindenburg).

So how do those promoting the commonly accepted version of history explain this?
They can’t.

In the video shared below, Lyn Leahz shares even more about these hieroglyphics and discusses additional “out of place artifacts” around the globe…


There is also mounting evidence that mankind had knowledge of dinosaurs in ancient times.

Posted below is a photo of an ancient engraving on a Buddhist temple in Cambodia known as the Ta Prohm Stegosaurus.  According to the commonly accepted version of history, such an engraving should be absolutely impossible because dinosaurs died out millions of years ago and modern scientists only started digging them up a couple hundred years ago.  And yet this engraving is there…

© The Truth Wins

According to archaeologists, this temple in Cambodia is approximately 800 years old…

Deep in the jungles of Cambodia are ornate temples and palaces from the Khmer civilization. One such temple, Ta Prohm, abounds with stone statues and reliefs. Almost every square inch of the gray sandstone is covered with ornate, detailed carvings. These depict familiar animals like monkeys, deer, water buffalo, parrots, and lizards. However, one column contains an intricate carving of a stegosaur-like creature. But how could artisans decorating an 800 year old Buddhist temple know what a dinosaur looked like? Western science only began assembling dinosaurs skeletons in the past two centuries.

Very strange stuff.

Another unexpected place where we find “ancient dinosaur art” is on the ancient Ica Stones that were discovered down in Peru.  These stones were originally found by the Spanish in 1535, and Spanish explorers sent some of these stones back to Spain in 1562.

The art on many of these stones is extremely beautiful, but what makes them extremely controversial is the fact that many of them appear to contain clear depictions of dinosaurs.  Here is one example…

© The Truth Wins

And here is another example.  If you look closely at this one, you can see what very much looks like a Triceratops…

Once again, those promoting the commonly accepted version of history are at a loss to explain this.  Most commonly, they attempt to explain this phenomenon away as a hoax because locals did start creating fake “Ica stones” in recent years once they discovered that tourists wanted to buy them.

But the Ica stones that are considered to be authentic contain some remarkable details.  In fact, much of the anatomical knowledge about dinosaurs depicted on these stones was only discovered by modern scientists just very recently…

Other items of anatomical accuracy that attest to the authenticity of these Ica Stone depictions include the positioning of the tail and legs. Early critics said the Ica Stones were fakes, in part because their tails were sticking out while walking. Paleontologists in the 1960s were confident that dinosaurs dragged their tails. The paleontologists were wrong and the Ica Stones were right.  Scientists now believe dinosaurs held their massive tails off the ground while walking, because there are no drag marks on dinosaur trackways.  The dinosaurs on the Ica Stones are depicted standing upright, rather than with legs splayed out in a lizard-like position. That, according to dinosaur experts, is “dead on” accurate.

© The Truth Wins

Of course the Ica Stones are just one of the incredible examples of ancient dinosaur art that have been discovered all over the world.  For many, many more examples of this phenomenon, just check out the article that you can find right here.

Anyone that attempts to convince you that humans that lived thousands of years ago were bumbling dolts that were lucky to build mud huts and cover their genitals with grass skirts is lying to you.

The truth is that human history is incredibly complex.  There are monolithic structures all over the planet that are still standing after thousands of years that remind all of us that great civilizations with amazing technologies once thrived.

And there is actually evidence that modern humans are actually getting dumber.  A Stanford University biology professor recently published a work in which he expressed his conclusion that humans have been getting dumber for thousands of years.

Also, Dr. John Sanford of Cornell University has conducted groundbreaking research that demonstrates conclusively that the human genome is steadily degenerating and is eventually heading toward extinction.
So perhaps we should not think of ourselves as so superior to ancient humanity.  The reality is that they may have been physically and mentally superior to us in many ways.

About the author: Michael T. Snyder is a former Washington D.C. attorney who now publishes The Truth. His new thriller entitled “The Beginning Of The End” is now available on Amazon.com.

Airline pilot has nowhere to escape from wireless radiation

© Lou Veseley/For the Toronto Star
Commercial pilot Melissa Chalmers
suffers from sensitivity to electromagnetic
waves that come off communication towers.
With the number of towers popping up
across the country people like Melissa
could have no place to live.

Airline pilot has nowhere to escape from wireless radiation
Oct 17, 2012 | Richard J. Brennan

Professional pilot Melissa Chalmers has moved twice in 10 months to escape wireless radiation and worries she's running out of places to hide.

The commercial pilot of 20 years is on sick leave. She suffers from sensitivity to electromagnetic waves - the invisible waves given off by almost everything electric, in particular, those emitted by communication towers that are popping up across Canada.

Chalmers, who lives near Grand Bend on Lake Huron, may be moving again because of a new a cell tower not far from her forested home.

"They have put a tower up down the road. I'm just waiting for it to be turned on and then I will probably have to leave the home," she said.

Chalmers first noticed, about two-and-a-half years ago when she lived in London, that the nausea she felt when she was in her apartment subsided when she left.

Cellphones, cellphone towers, wireless internet routers, cordless phones and power lines have all been recognized as possible contributors to electromagnetic hypersensitivity (EMS), which is caused by significant exposure from radio waves.

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EMS symptoms include poor sleep, fatigue, headache, nausea, dizziness, heart palpitations, memory impairment and skin rashes.

Dr. Riina Bray, medical director, Environmental Health Clinic, Toronto's Women College Hospital, is a leading physician on EMS and its symptoms.

"I'm just basically seeing more and more folks with electro hypersensitivity . . . there is a small fraction of the population who are hypersensitive and the WHO (World Health Organization) supports that phenomenon as being real," she told the Star.

"With the continuous onslaught of this stuff in our society it is very hard for these folks . . . to get better faster."

"If I have to move again," Chalmers told the Star, "it will be three times since Christmas, so I am getting pretty tired of moving and I really don't know where I am going to go at this point."

Critics say if Industry Canada, which has total control over telecommunications, has its way there will be no place for people such as Chalmers to live.

Industry Canada did not respond to a Star request for an interview.

Bray said the public should not have to prove harm. "It should be done by industry and government," she says.

Municipalities that have tried to control the number and location of cells towers say Industry Canada has told them it would block any attempt to usurp its powers.

The municipality of Lambton Shore near Lake Huron found out where it stood when it mused about creating a community, Port Franks, free of wireless radiation as did Oakville when it introduced its own protocol calling for a 200-metre setback.

"I went to that meeting in Oakville where it was discussed and it became very clear from Industry Canada and Health Canada that they were not going to change, they were not listening. They were there to dictate," said Frank Klegg, a retired Microsoft Canada president, who is now head of Citizens For Safe Technology (C4ST).

Klegg said C4ST wants to work with the federal government to establish so-called white zones across the country where people who are sensitive to wireless radiation can seek refuge.

Oakville Mayor Rob Burton said the federal government doesn't even consult the municipality on 95 per cent of the applications to erect cell towers and for the remaining 5 per cent he suggested the consultation is little more than lip service.

"What shocks me is the federal government pretending that we have a say," Burton said.

"Our protocol is designed to get us out of the line of fire . . . we have turned away seven or eight now (but) then the proponent then goes to Industry Canada (which) gives them the go-ahead," he said.

Could Mosasaurs be breeding off the coast of New Zealand?

Could Mosasaurs be breeding off the coast of New Zealand?
Aug 19, 2012 | Tony Lucas

There have been many encounters with unknown creatures off the coast of New Zealand, with the East coast being particularly favoured.

There is a very good reason for this, running parallel to New Zealand's coastline is the Hikurangi Trench. A deep gouge on the ocean floor, that descends in places to depths of 3,750 metres (12,300 ft).^[ (Lewis, Collott, & Lallemand, 1998, pp. 441-468.)

New Zealands unique oceanography

These deep troughs bring a wealth of nutrient rich organisms to the surface allowing for a mass of biodiversity to flourish in the nutrient rich upper waters.

Krill are profuse here along with smaller fish species which create a nutrient rich environment for larger predatory animals such as Giant Squid, which in turn are preyed upon by Sperm Whales. So there is no deficit of vast food supplies for large predatory animals cruising the depths of New Zealand's coastline.

Where the Hikurangi Trench joins up with the Tonga Trench, the area is heavily spotted with areas of geothermal activity which provide warm waters as well as a warm current which flows from the equatorial region.

This area of the Tonga Trench has a rich diversity of marine life previously undiscovered until recent expeditions. This is a very harsh environment where reshaping of the seafloor is happening continually, to quote from the results of a joint project between the Universities of Durham and Oxford, and funded by the National Research Centre.

"Where the Pacific plate collides with the Indo-Australian plate, it is forced downwards into the trench, a subduction zone, and the volcanoes are carried with it.

The trench, reaching a depth of 10.9km, forms the second deepest stretch of seabed anywhere in the world - easily large enough to hold Mount Everest"

What would make this an ideal nursery and breeding place?

The abundant food supply, warm, water and lack of large predatory animals would make this an ideal breeding and nursery ground for Mosasaurs. Migrating whales along these routes would also provide a range of suitably sized animals for the young mosasaurs to feed on, and just returning from the feeding grounds would make these whales wholesome additions to their diet.

Personally, I think the primary reason that many of these creatures are avoiding detection is the fact that they have learned to avoid the sound of a ship's engine and stay well away from any encroaching vessel or main shipping lane.

These out of the way areas often lead to shallow bays which are warmed by the circum-tasmanian current which brings warm water to the Bay of Plenty, which coincidently boarders the Kermedec trench. Warm water, shallow bays and a deep nutrient rich feeding ground create ideal nutrient rich conditions. Likewise a high percentage of creature observations have been made in these very waters.

So what has been seen in these waters?

The earliest known reference to Mosasaur like creatures in New Zealand waters comes from a report dated August 1^st 1899 from the Union Steam Ships Chief Officer of the Rotomahama, Lindsay Kerr.

He reported a huge Conger Eel, except it had two fins, one on each side of the body. This colossus Rose up to a high of 30 feet out of the water. This sighting occurred near the Portland Light situated between Gisborne and Napier.

Right in the area of suitable Mosasaur habitat coincidently.

When shown pictures of various types of Eels, Mr Kerr said it had a more crocodilian type head rather than anything he was shown.

In April 1971 the crew of the Kompira Maru saw a "Bug-Eyed Monster" which resembled a large crocodile, but had fins instead of Legs, which were clearly visible as it leaped and dived under the water.

1972 three women were whitebaiting at the mouth of the Orari River near Temuka watched a huge creature wallowing in the breakers about 30 m away from them.

They described a light grey lizard like beast that was around 15 m long, which at one point opened its mouth to reveal numerous small sharp teeth.

(SamYivano, 2007)

There is nothing to be said to make me think otherwise but personally, I do believe these creatures are out there as there have been too many sightings that are so closely reminiscent of mosasaurs as to be easily dismissed.

There have been 11 reported sightings of Mosasaur like animals reported in New Zealand waters, a higher number than anywhere else.

Are they a new species?

Perhaps.

I would more like to think of a Coelacanth scenario, an ancient species that has adapted to survive into the modern age.

We are still but children taking our first unsteady paddling steps into a very wide and portentous ocean that holds many secrets and undisclosed treasures we thought once lost.