The Most Important Jurassic Discovery Ever Made in the Arctic!

The Most Important Jurassic Discovery Ever Made in the Arctic!

HISTORY(TM) UNVEILS THE DISCOVERY OF One of the Largest OCEAN PREDATORS Ever Found, PREDATOR X

2-hour Special to premiere on Sunday, March 29 @ 8pm ET/PT

Once-in-a-Lifetime Find in the Arctic Reveals a New Species - A Giant Jurassic-Age Pliosaur Estimated at 50 Feet Long...and 150 Million Years Old

NEW YORK, March 17 /PRNewswire/ -- On the remote archipelago of Svalbard, just 800 miles from the North Pole, a team of paleontologists has made a remarkable discovery. Led by Jorn Hurum from the University of Oslo Natural History Museum they have unearthed the fossilized remains of a huge sea creature from the distant past - which they believe is the most important Jurassic discovery ever made in the Arctic. PREDATOR X is the story of this major Arctic discovery of an entirely new species, 150 million years old. It is a new species of pliosaur, a massive and powerful marine predator estimated to be at least 50 feet long... weighing 45 tons - six times the weight of a Tyrannosaurus Rex - and with powerful jaws that killed with an amazing 33,000-pound bite - four times as powerful as a T Rex.

(Logo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080416/NYW113LOGO )

The two-hour special PREDATOR X premieres on HISTORY(TM) on Sunday, March 29 at 8pm ET/PT.

PREDATOR X follows Jorn Hurum and his team of paleontologists every step of the way, from field work through cutting edge research of this amazing dinosaur-age reptile - one of the most incredible Jurassic ocean discoveries in modern history.

Hurum and team member Patrick Druckenmiller, an Alaskan paleontologist and extreme adventurer, must excavate the find from the ice, transport it back to the lab and bring it back to life using advanced scientific techniques. They travel the globe breaking new ground to scientifically understand and recreate Predator X. Their results are astounding and only now can they fully understand the beast they unearthed. Analysis usually reserved for precision engineering of modern machines, reveals the secrets of Predator X. Their quest takes them from wind tunnels to CT scanners to bio-mechanic and robotic laboratories. In analyzing its body, delving into its brain and witnessing its hunting strategy, the team conclude that they have found a perfectly designed killing machine - the most terrifying beast to patrol the planet's oceans.

As a child, Dr. Hurum had visited the Oslo Natural History Museum, well known for its treasure trove of fossils, and gazed in awe at the fossilized flipper of a prehistoric sea predator. A quarter of a century later, Dr. Hurum was in Svalbard, one of the most inhospitable places on Earth, leading a team of paleontologists committed to finding what they all believed was there. Because of its extreme polar conditions, few paleontologists have ever explored Svalbard's fertile fossil hunting ground; and Dr. Hurum's group along with Dr. Druckenmiller are the first to document this diverse assembly of marine reptiles.

With modern forensic technology, Dr. Hurum and team work to unlock the secrets of the monster. CGI will help bring Predator X to life, in an environment like the one all those years ago. Its anatomy, physiology and hunting technique all point to it being the ultimate predator - the ferocious pliosaur they are calling Predator X. Pliosaurs were a short-necked form of plesiosaur, a group of extinct reptiles that inhabited the world's oceans in the age of dinosaurs. The team is able to determine that their find, Predator X, is indeed a new species based on its incredible size and bone morphology - specifically: the flipper bones, the breast plate, and the neck vertebrae.

Predator X is produced for History(TM) by Atlantic Productions. Executive Producer for Atlantic Productions is Anthony Geffen. Executive Producer for History is Dirk Hoogstra.

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Photo: http://www.newscom.com/cgi-bin/prnh/20080416/NYW113LOGO
Source: History(TM)

CONTACT: Kathie Gordon, +1-212-210-1320, Kathie.gordon@history.com

Web Site: http://www.history.com/

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