Natural History Museum in Oslo, Norway has announced the discovery of one of the largest dinosaur-era marine reptiles ever found – an enormous sea predator known as a pliosaur estimated to be almost 15 meters (50 feet) feet long.

The 150 million year-old Jurassic fossil was discovered on the remote Norwegian archipelago of Svalbard, at 78 degrees north latitude, approximately 1300 km (800 miles) from the North Pole. It was found in the summer of 2006 by a team of Norwegian paleontologists and volunteers from the University of Oslo Natural History Museum, led by Dr. Jørn Hurum. The fossil was excavated in the summer of 2007 and has until now been prepared and conserved by a team at the Natural History Museum in Oslo .

A pliosaur is a type of plesiosaur, a group of extinct reptiles that lived in the world’s oceans during the age of dinosaurs. Pliosaurs had a tear-drop shaped body and two sets of powerful paddles that it used to “fly” through the water. Their short neck supported a massive skull full of an impressive set of teeth. Pliosaurs were the top predators in the sea at the time, preying upon squid-like animals, fish, and even other marine reptiles.

Pliosaurs were large reptiles that averaged 5-6 meters (16-20 feet) in length. One of the largest pliosaurs known is the Australian giant Kronosaurus , which measures in at 10-11 meters (33-36 feet) long. The new Norwegian find, named “The Monster” by team members, is estimated to be about 15 meters (50 feet) long, making it one of the longest and most massive plesiosaurs yet found.

“Not only is this specimen significant in that it is one of the largest and relatively complete plesiosaurs ever found, it also demonstrates that these gigantic animals inhabited the northern seas of our planet during the age of dinosaurs” said Dr. Patrick Druckenmiller, a plesiosaur specialist at the University of Alaska Museum, and a member of the expedition that found and excavated the fossil.

The team made the discovery in the summer of 2006, when parts of the skeleton, including skull fragments, were found weathering out of the side of a mountain.

“We knew immediately that this was something special. The large pieces of bone and the structure on the fragments told us immediately that this was something big” said Dr. Jørn Hurum.

A larger crew returned in August of 2007 to excavate the fossil. After removing about hundred tons of rock by hand the team was rewarded by uncovering a significant portion of the skeleton.

“Although we didn’t get the entire skeleton, we found many of the most important parts, including portions of the skull, teeth, much of the neck and back, the shoulder girdle, and a nearly complete forelimb (paddle)” said Druckenmiller, “Amazingly, the paddle alone is nearly 10 feet long.”

During its excavation in the summer of 2007, the team of paleontologists and volunteers had to endure challenging arctic weather – high winds, rain and fog, and temperatures hovering around freezing. The team completed their fieldwork in a mid-August blizzard. Throughout the three-week field season the team also had to be constantly on the alert for polar bears.

Although the crew focused on removing the “The Monster”, parts of two other marine reptiles were also collected – a long-necked plesiosaur and an ichthyosaur, a type of extinct sea reptile form the age of dinosaurs that superficially resembled modern dolphins. Based on the wealth of finds, scientists now recognize Svalbard as home to one of the richest accumulations of marine reptiles in the world.

“The scientific value of such a large locality with unknown species of marine reptiles is just staggering” Jørn Hurum comments.

The bones collected last summer are currently undergoing the slow process of cleaning at the Natural History Museum in Oslo .

“From the bones we have finished stabilizing so far this absolutely looks like a new species” Jørn Hurum tells enthusiastically.

Last summer’s field work ended on a high note; after the team finished excavating the new find, parts of a skull and skeleton from another gigantic pliosaur, possibly of the same new species, were found weathering out at a different site. The team is currently planning to return this upcoming summer in order to excavate the skull during Svalbard ’s short summer field season.

“All together we have GPS-coordinates on 40 skeletons of different marine reptiles in the area. We will have work for many years to come” Jørn Hurum comments with a smile.

The scientific description of the monster and other new marine reptiles from the locality will be parts of a Ph.D. study by one of the members of the crew, Espen M. Knutsen.

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In a modern-day counterpart to Mao Zedong’s program to modernize the Chinese economy, China’s pharmaceutical industry is quietly taking its own Great Leap Forward — as a major force in drug discovery and development, according to an article scheduled for the Feb. 4 issue of Chemical & Engineering News.

China already is an important source of active ingredients that large pharmaceutical companies in the United States and other countries use to make prescription and over-the-counter drugs. C&EN’s cover story, by Senior Correspondent Jean-François Tremblay, notes that China is playing an increasingly important, yet mostly unrecognized role in drug discovery.

Companies based in China that undertake research projects on behalf of foreign companies have in the past three years beefed up their range of services. From Shanghai to Beijing, new companies are being launched with research capabilities that, in terms of the time it takes to produce results, exceed those of Western pharmaceutical companies.

A growing number of Chinese firms offer a full range of drug research and development services, including synthesis, process research and scale up, and animal testing, the article states. Within two years, the first drug to be mostly developed in China could begin human trials in the U.S., Tremblay says.

The growth in pharmaceutical services in China seems to be part of a major trend. “Last century, we saw the pharmaceutical industry move from Europe to the United States,” C&EN quotes a manager at one drug discovery company. “Now, it’s perhaps moving to China and India.”

Article title: “China’s Pharma Leaps into Discovery”

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Metabolism is a central feature of life — a myriad of biochemical processes that, together, enable organisms to nourish and sustain themselves. Scientists at Cold Spring Harbor Laboratory (CSHL) are in the forefront of efforts to demonstrate how the regulation of genes governs fundamental life processes, including metabolism.

Such research, performed on simple model organisms like yeast cells, has implications for efforts to understand natural processes such as aging and disease states including cancer.

Recently a team at CSHL led by Professor Leemor Joshua-Tor, Ph.D., announced a new and unexpected wrinkle in a story they previously thought they understood about how yeast cells, through the action of genes, adjust their metabolism in response to changes in their sources of food.

Adapting to New Energy Sources

“S. cerevisiae, or common baker’s yeast, can use any number of different types of sugar molecules for energy production,” noted Dr. Joshua-Tor, a structural biologist. “Importantly, the yeast cell can rapidly respond to changes in its nutritional environment by altering the expression of specific genes that allow it to make use of those different energy sources.”

This much, notes Dr. Joshua-Tor and colleagues, has been understood for years. “The players involved in this process have been known for some time. But we did not understand precisely how the components of this particular biochemical pathway worked together,” said Stephen Johnston, a professor at the Biodesign Institute at Arizona State University and a co-author of the study.

It was Dr. Joshua-Tor’s team at CSHL that took the step of investigating the architecture of the proteins involved in the pathway, at the level of individual atoms. Using a technique called x-ray crystallography, they discovered a “player” in the molecular cast of characters whose involvement previously had been overlooked.

The unexpected molecule is called NADP. The team discovered that when a yeast cell changes from using glucose, a simple sugar, as a nutritional source to using galactose, a more complex sugar often found in dairy products and vegetables such as sugar beets, NADP is called into action. It “docks” to a protein called Gal80p, which acts along with a gene regulating-protein called Gal4p, to adapt the metabolism of the yeast cell so that it can make use of galactose.

“Importantly, changes in cellular levels of NAD, a close relative of NADP, had previously been linked to a gene circuit that controls aging and longevity in a large number of different organisms, including yeast but also including animals,” said Professor Rolf Sternglanz of Stony Brook University in New York, a co-author of the study.

Why The Regulatory Cascade Is Important

“It is becoming increasingly clear that the metabolic state of a cell is linked to the expression of its genes in a way that impacts biological processes of many kinds, ranging from cancer to aging,” said Dr. Joshua-Tor. The biochemical cascade identified by the team is part of a complex chain of events whose object is regulation of the output of specific genes.

Not only does the team’s work help explain how links in that gene-regulatory chain are constructed. “Gene-regulatory proteins impact every property of a cell and have long been recognized as possible targets for drugs,” said Dr. Joshua-Tor. “However, these types of proteins have proven resistant to the chemistry of modern drug design. A detailed understanding of how gene regulatory proteins are controlled may offer new and unanticipated opportunities to design drugs that would impact this class of proteins.”

Journal reference: “NADP Regulates the Yeast GAL Induction System” appears in Science on February 22. Authors include P. Rajesh Kumar, Yao Yu, Rolf Sternglanz, Stephen Albert Johnston, Leemor Joshua-Tor. (sciencemag.org/cgi/content/full/319/5866/1090)

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