He's not lying: Image subtly modified from an illustration on wikimedia commons
Courtesy HaplochromisAdd it to the list! Which list?

The list of things that will kill you!

And, please, don’t quibble. The nit-pickers, the brick-counters, and the penny-slicers among you Buzzketeers might point out that, since we can really only die one time, a person can’t be killed by more than one thing, and therefore making a list is silly.

To all y’all, I say, “Shut it!” A person can be technically dead for several minutes and still be brought back into this town we call Life. Or, maybe, several fatal things could happen to you at very nearly the same time, and if the final straw could even be distinguished, we might accurately say that each contributed to your final achievement of death. Example: “Was it the hypothermia, the severe electric shock, or the brain parasites that killed JGordon?” “Hmm. Well if it was the brain parasites, him digging a fork into the toaster while trapped in a meat locker couldn’t have helped.” See?

So let’s recap the list so far:

1) Brain parasites
2) Electrocution
3) Hypothermia
4) Throwing knives (accidental)
5) Throwing knives (intentional)
6) Embarrassment (via brain aneurysm)
7) Misunderstanding enema directions
8) Falling off a high tree
9) Roller coaster decapitation
10) Poisoned dates
11) Fame

And the newest item?

. . . . .

“Predator X,” a carnivorous aquatic monster with a nine-foot-long skull, and foot-long teeth! It could totally kill you dead! The only caveat is that you would have to travel back to the cretaceous period, which is still about 65 million years further than we’re currently able to time travel. But, still, once you got there, you would be bitten like crazy.

Predator X has been lurking around the lower end of this list for a while now. For the last several years, paleontologists have been excavating a huge deposit of marine fossils on the arctic island of Svalbard. (That story was covered here on Buzz, back in October of 2006.) In fact, I wrote about another monster pliosaur uncovered at the site last March (See “Something Awesome.”) But Predator X, which was discovered on the last day of that field season, is an even more monstrous pliosaur. It looks like it was around 50 feet long, and weighed in the neighborhood of 45 tons.

(Pliosaurs, just to review, are extinct aquatic reptiles, and are not to be confused with “plesiosaurs.” Plesiosaurs are those long-necked, Nessie jobbers. Pliosaurs are related to plesiosaurs, but they had short, thick necks, and huge, scary heads.)

Back when the pliosaur we call “Something Awesome” was discovered, a paleontologist made a fun superlative sort-of statement about the new creature: “It was big enough to pick up a small car in its jaws and bite it in half.” Because Predator X is slightly larger, I’m going to save that scientist some time, and go ahead and say, “It was big enough to pick up a medium-sized car in its jaws and bite it in half.”

Very impressive, Predator X. You would so be able to kill me.

Tags : pliosaur, paleontology, Svalbard, arctic, superlatives

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Another record holder: Sign touting Paris, Tennessee, as the 'Home of the World's Biggest Fish Fry
Courtesy Photo by Dieter C. Ullrich, for Worlds Biggest Fish Fry, a Tennessee Local Legacies projectLooks like the world of piscine superlatives has a new leader in the Deepest Living Fish category. The highly-pressurized Pseudoliparis amblystomopsis, has been videotaped feeding on shrimp at a depth of 4.8 miles. That’s a lot atmospheres crushing down on it, but it doesn’t seem to mind.

Scientists from the UK and Japan used remote controlled robots with cameras to film the feed-fest in the Japan Trench located around the Pacific Rim. Seventeen of the fish can be seen in the video scurrying about the ocean floor. You can see watch video of the new record holders here.

You notice the category is for Deepest LIVING Fish. The record for deepest of any fish is held by Abyssobrotula galatheae, a fish scooped up from the bottom of the Puerto Rico Trench. Unfortunately, it was dead, so it was competing in an entirely different category.

Well, anyway, both fish join the ranks of other gilled record holders. And while we’re at it, we may as well review them. The title for smallest is held currently by Paedocypris progenetica, a bizarre little creature discovered living in highly acidic waters on the island of Sumatra. It’s about the length of your thumbnail, and also holds the record for smallest vertebrate. On the other hand, the world’s largest fish is the whale shark (Rhincodon typus). If any of you guessed it was the blue whale, you need to turn off your Xbox machines and bask in my pity. By the way, the whale shark can grow up to 40 feet long, so I guess it’s also the world’s longest.

The world’s slowest fish is the seahorse (Hippocampus sp.) which drags along at .001 per hour, and would take about an hour to move five feet. The sailfish, Istiophorus platypterus, which has been clocked at 68 miles per hour, is the fastest. Not bad for giant-finned brute that can weigh up to 200 pounds.

The winner of the World’s Ugliest Fish is as yet undecided, and probably has something to do with the fact there’s not even a category for Most Beautiful Fish. But I think the right choice was made for the Scariest Fish. You wouldn't want to meet him in a dark sewer.

I suppose the record holder of the Funniest Fish title could be the clownfish (Amphiprion ocellaris), but the category seems too broad. Funniest how? Looking? Tasting? Ability to tell a joke? The Dumbest Fish in the World category is equally too broad? Again, it depends on the criteria. It certainly could be the spawning moronic salmon you always see on nature programs jumping right into the waiting jaws of a hungry grizzly bear. Or it could be all fish.

Since I’ve taken it this far, here are some lesser-known categories. I suppose the Fastest Fish Recipe could somehow involve a sailfish, but I doubt the World’s Biggest Fish Fry in Paris, Tennessee has anything to do with the whale shark.

Tags : fish, icthyology, superlatives, sharks, sailfish, marine biology

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