Update: April 11, 2007

THE MOST SUSHI

AND

MARS ROVER UPDATE

By Pam Eastlick for THE DEEP on line

Welcome to The Deep science and technology column where we cover topics from the deep sea to deep space and beyond.

MYTH OR REALITY
Everybody loves monsters.  All you have to do is look at the popularity of movies like King Kong or odzilla or even the Harry Potter series to realize that scary monsters touch a very deep point somewhere in the primitive parts of our brains.  Monsters are what ‘primal fear’ is all about. But part of the monster attraction lies in our certain knowledge that these gigantic movie creatures aren’t real.  There are no apes 50 feet tall; no lizards that can take out the Golden Gate bridge with one swipe of the tail.  Why not?  Because by this time, given the rapidly expanding pace of civilization, someone would have noticed.  It’s still possible to discover a new species of lizard in Central Park, a new species of cat in Borneo, but these are small animals.  There are no undiscovered King Kongs anywhere on the planet.

So where do these monster tales come from?  Bones.  Although there are few dinosaur fossils lying around on the Earth’s surface in the 21st century, that certainly hasn’t always been the case.  Dinosaurs come in all sizes, but many of them were BIG and a ten-foot long femur (the long bone in the leg of all our-limbed animals) would have certainly captured the attention of any hunter. 

Where did the dragons come from?  In a place in China called Lurking Dragon Hill, scientists have uncovered 68 closely packed fossils of ichthyosaurs.  Many of them are over 75 feet long.  They didn’t have to dig very deep and the site’s name certainly indicates these are not the first fossils found here.
Giant bones, giant teeth.  Humans knew about the dinosaurs long before their official discovery in the 1800’s.  But primitive people didn’t call them dinosaurs and for them, these bones didn’t represent creatures that lived in the long distant past.  They said, “Whatever left these bones doesn’t live here anymore, but they haven’t been gone long and who knows, they might be back next week!”  An ichthyosaur that’s been dead for 30 million years becomes the dragon that still lives in the mountains.  Well-preserved skeletons of pterosaurs become the Thunder Birds of Sioux Indian legend. So, ancient bones are transformed into myth.  But there are no King Kongs; no Godzillas; no Dinosaur Island, no big land monsters. . . . . But, what about the ocean?

Water covers 70% of our planet and most of it is several miles deep.  There are over 300 million cubic miles of water in the world ocean.  (I suggest you read that last sentence again, just to be sure you read it right.)  That, my friends, is enough water to hide thousands, even millions of monsters. And monsters certainly did exist there.  The 75-foot long ichthyosaurs were only the beginning.  There were crocodiles like Dakosaurus with the head of a land dinosaur, plesiosaurs 50 feet long that may have inspired the Loch Ness monster legends, and the mosasaurs; part snake and part crocodile.

Mosasaur skull

Are the monsters still there?  Well, it depends on what you call a monster.  Certainly there are blue whales, the largest creatures who ever lived (much bigger than all the dinosaurs, land or water).  And there are great white sharks and sperm whales and other huge creatures. 

But is it possible that there are still living mosasaurs in all those cubic miles of ocean?  Do the ichthyosaurs still survive?  Is Nessie really a plesiosaur?  Probably not, but there is that little news item that surfaced in the early days of 2007.

We learned about giant squid when we started catching whales on a commercial basis.  Sperm whales, the biggest of the toothed whales, like many of us humans appreciate a good meal of squid.  And when these sperm whales were hunted by humans, we discovered dinner plate-sized scars on their hide.  Marks that could have only been left by a squid, a BIG one.  But giant squid proved to be very elusive.  Occasionally one would wash up on a beach in an advanced state of decomposition, but they don’t have to surface for air and they had never been seen in the open ocean, despite many expeditions to find them, until September 2005. Japanese scientists finally were able to lure one to a fishing line and take its picture.  The squid was over three thousand feet below the surface when the picture was taken.  It was over 25 feet long.  That’s a lot of sushi!

Giant squid on Japanese fishing line

 

But that doesn’t begin to hold a candle to the colossal squid caught off Antarctica in February 2007.  It weighed over 1,000 lbs and was 33 feet long. The word ‘colossal’ is this squid’s ‘common’ name, to distinguish it from the ‘giant’ squid.  ‘Colossal’ squid aren’t as long as ‘giant’ squid (or so we think) but they seem to outweigh them.  And there are other differences.  Unlike giant squids, whose tentacles are equipped with suckers lined with small teeth, the suckers at the tips of the colossal squid's tentacles have sharp swiveling hooks.  Its body is wider and stouter, and therefore heavier, than that of the giant squid.  We think colossal squids have a longer mantle than giant squids, although their tentacles are shorter.  The beaks of colossal squids are the largest known of any squid, and this incredible beast is also believed to have the largest eyes in the animal kingdom.  Giant squid, colossal squid.  Are there other undiscovered monsters lurking in the sea?  Who knows?

Colossal squid Credit: New Zealand Fisheries

THE ENERGIZER BUNNY WENT TO Mars?

No, the Energizer Bunny didn’t make the trip to the Red Planet, but the way Spirit and Opportunity have been behaving, you’d think so.  Over THREE years after their arrival on Mars, these golf cart-sized robots are still roaming over the surface and still doing great science.  They may have only traveled a total of seven miles, but you just try to keep your car running in a place where it gets down to 200 degrees below zero at night and there are frequent tornados with speeds up to 100 mph.

The mission hasn’t been without difficulties.  Spirit has been plagued with a balky front wheel and Opportunity got stuck in a sand dune for a while, but they’ve achieved astounding science.  Much of their continued success comes from those dust devils that periodically sweep over the rovers and clear their solar panels of dust.  Opportunity has proved that there was once water on the surface of Mars and Spirit has climbed a hill as tall as the Statue of Liberty.  Opportunity is currently perched on the side of giant Victoria Crater and very soon will be headed in to explore.  Opportunity will probably never emerge from Victoria Crater, but the science it does on the layered walls will tell us much about Mars’ past and help us make predictions about its future.

Opportunity peers into Victoria Crater (Credit: JPL)

Robot tracks on Mars (Credit: JPL)