Rabu, 25 April 2012

Animal, vegetable - or monster? 9ft

Animal, vegetable - or monster? 9ft

  • Could have been 9ft cactus-like creature
  • Experts baffled by remains - 3ft wide and 9ft long
  • 'Jigsaw' of animal or vegetable - could have lived on land or under the sea

PUBLISHED: 07:51 EST, 25 April 2012 | UPDATED: 08:00 EST, 25 April 2012

Most fossils are thumb-sized - but when engineer Ron Fine found a mysterious rocky shape in Northern Kentucky, he 'just  kept digging, and digging, and digging.'

The fossil - dubbed Godzillus - is three feet wide and nine feet long - and palaeontologists have no idea what the monster might have looked like, or even whether it was an animal or vegetable.

Fine says he suspects it might have been a sea anemone-like creature that stood nine feet tall 450 million years ago - but it's not clear even if it lived on land or beneath the waves.

Experts are baffled as to whether the 6ft creature is animal, vegetable or mineraThe men in the photo are Ray Fine (middle) geologist Dave Meyer (left) and Carl Brett (Right)

Experts are baffled as to whether the 6ft creature is animal, vegetable or mineraThe men in the photo are Ray Fine (middle) geologist Dave Meyer (left) and Carl Brett (Right)

Fine believes that the create might have been a giant sea anemone that stood up to 9ft tall

Fine believes that the create might have been a giant sea anemone that stood up to 9ft tall

The remains of a mysterious ‘monster’ dug up by amateur palaeontologist Ron Fine has left geologists and scientists baffled as to what the 450million year old creature was.

Mechanical designer Ron Fine, 43, lives in Dayton, Ohio but his real passion is palaeontology - the study and search for fossils - and he is a member of the amateur group the Dry Dedgers.

The fossil is an elliptical shaped specimen which measures three-an-a-half-foot wide by six-and-a-half-foot long.

‘It's definitely a new discovery,’ Meyer said. ‘And we're sure it's biological. We just don't know yet exactly what it is.’

Shallow seas once covered Cincinnati 450million years ago and Mr Fine believes that prehistoric algae on the organism could mean it was once a giant sea anemone.

He said: ‘I knew right away that I had found an unusual fossil. Imagine a saguaro cactus with flattened branches and horizontal stripes in place of the usual vertical stripes. That's the best description I can give.’

‘I've been fossil collecting for 39 years and never had a need to excavate,' says Fine. 'But this fossil just kept going, and going, and going,’ Fine said. ‘I had to make 12 trips, over the course of the summer, to excavate more material before I finally found the end of it.’

The main theory is it is a giant sea creature due to most of the state being covered by shallow waters 450 million years ago

The main theory is it is a giant sea creature due to most of the state being covered by shallow waters 450 million years ago

Even then he still had to guess as to the full size, because it required countless hours of cleaning and reconstruction to put it all back together.

‘When I finally finished it was three-and-a-half feet wide and six-and-a-half feet long,’ Fine said. ‘In a world of thumb-sized fossils that's gigantic!’

Meyer, co-author of A Sea without Fish: Life in the Ordovician Sea of the Cincinnati Region, agreed that it might be the largest fossil recovered from the Cincinnati area.

My personal theory is that it stood upright, with branches reaching out in all directions similar to a shrub,’ Fine said. ‘If I am right, then the upper-most branch would have towered nine feet high.’ 

The discovery was made public for the first time at the Geological Society of America meeting in Mr Fine's hometown of Dayton, Ohio on Tuesday.

Ben Dattilo, an assistant professor of geology at Indiana University-Purdue University Fort Wayne, said: ‘We are looking for people who might have an idea of what it is.’


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