Posted on 05/30/2006 11:20:11 PM PDT by Marius3188
IQALUIT, Nunavut (CP) - A mysterious skull discovered on the edge of the Arctic Circle has sparked interest in what creatures roamed Baffin Island in the distant past, and what life a warming climate may support in the future.
Andrew Dialla, a resident of Pangnirtung, Nunavut, says he found the skull protruding from the frozen tundra during a walk near the shore with his daughter about a month ago.
The horned skull is about the size of a man's fist. It resembles a baby caribou skull, except at that age, a caribou wouldn't have antlers, researchers and elders have pointed out.
Its discovery has caused a stir in Canada's Eastern Arctic. Pictures of the skull, sent over e-mail, have prompted residents to speculate whether the skull might belong to a long-extinct deer or sheep that inhabited the land millions of years ago when the climate was much warmer.
Meanwhile, Dialla is considering shipping the skull south to be examined by Richard Harrington, a distinguished retired paleontologist from Ottawa's Museum of Nature.
Harrington has spent over a decade helping to excavate an ancient beaver pond on Ellesmere Island in Canada's High Arctic. That site, estimated to be four million years old, contained the remains of a now-extinct species of beaver, as well as vanished species of deer, horses, wolverines and bears.
This April, researchers announced another big discovery on Ellesmere Island - a strange creature, part fish and part alligator, which could have been the first to crawl from the oceans to shore 375 million years ago.
But little similar research has been conducted in the region where Dialla's mystery skull was unearthed, according to Mary Ellen Thomas, manager of the Nunavut Research Institute.
Several years ago, a fossilized stump of a tree did turn up near Pangnirtung, well above the tree-line, she said.
She hopes the buzz surrounding the skull could lead to more finds.
"This will perhaps interest people in south Baffin. That's good."
One thing Thomas and her colleagues do find themselves doing is fielding many phone calls from Arctic inhabitants who have spotted unfamiliar species of birds and insects such as wasps, previously unknown so far north.
Warm weather that researchers link to climate change continues to break records in the Arctic as more-southern species venture farther north.
There's an interesting theory that explains these types of findings by the possibility of a polar shift -- the crust of the earth moving from temperate latitudes to the poles from time to time.
Hey why not, "scientists" do it all the time.
In Velikovsky's Worlds in Collision, he basically says that meteor or astroid strikes (or near strikes) may have knocked the earth of its axis in fairly short and violent order.
The earth constantly changes and Al Gore figures it is something bran new.
ping.
I think it is a Jackalope
Seriously, it is probably one of many species wiped out by Global cooling. You can do your part to combat global cooling by buying an SUV today.
Sounds like the Arctic Chupacabra.
Hilarious article! The last line is a capper- "Warm weather that researchers link to the climate change continues to break records in the artic as more southern species venture farther north." What do newly discovered fossils have to do with such a proclamation? Damn- I just may have outlived, my own stupidity- then again...?
Lets hear it for Velikofsky.
 A mysterious skull (shown) discovered on the edge of the Arctic Circle has sparked interest in what creatures roamed Baffin Island in the distant past, and what life a warming climate may support in the future. (CP/HO/Uqqurmiut Centre for Arts and Crafts) |
Velikovsky was a kook. He also wrote a book "Twelfth Planet (I think)" that contends that there is a planet in an excentric orbit that brings it close to earth every 10,000 years. The inhabitants of this planet visit us at that time. They are Von Daniken's gods in space-ships. Velikovsky, like Von Daniken, never worries about evidence, or science when it comes to proposing his theories."
Global warming, global cooling...
Darned cave men.
Bones!
Anyone knows what that is! It's an old Viking helmet.
This could be the cause for current climate change. Who are they going to blame this on?
It's no telling where this land mass was 375 million years ago, someone knows but I don't. It was only 120 million years ago that Africa was still attached to South America. So...
If I remember correctly, he used ancient folklore and legend along with his brand of scientific investigation to come up with his hypothesies. Kook that he was, he did raise some interesting thought and possibilities. BTW, I'm not a subscriber to his views, but don't discount everything he wrote. I didn't read Twelfth Planet.
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