MORE POST K/T DINOSAURS

["Darren Naish" <dwn194@soton.ac.uk>]

Further to Dr. Jim Kirkland's informative post on Eocene dinosaur and shark
fossils, French Miocene sediments have yielded re-worked Upper Cretaceous
dinosaur and crocodile teeth. *Miocene*! 

Work on theropod teeth in the lab shows that they can withstand the equivalent
of 1000s of km of transport in stream channels and stuff and still look
geologically fresh.

There's also supposed to be a Miocene ichthyosaur from Malta. Apparently the
fossil itself is good, but the palaeontologist who reported it (Ventura)
expressed doubts about the dating of the sediments. Or maybe the fossil didn't
come from the sediments it was reported from. Other than this record, the very
most recent ichthyosaurs are from the late Cenomanian of Europe - they are bits
of the cosmopolitan _Platypterygius_.

Some doubtful alleged platypterygine bits and pieces are known, I think I'm
right in saying, from the Santonian of Australia (reported in the 1940s). I
wrote all this up for my dissertation but I'll be darned if I can remember it
now. What little space exists in my brain has been filled up with baleen whale
hybrids and Antarctic narwhals.

"Drake - we are leaving!"

DARREN NAISH