Old Skool Jaws & The Lonely Whale

I read this article today. A guy was mining in a tunnel (He was actually doing another miner's work for him), and he's just mining (pun intended) his own business when all of the sudden a rock falls, uncovering an 18 inch piece of a shark's jaw! Biologists are not sure what species the jaws came from, but they know it was from the Edestus genus, and it probably weighed about 2 tons. This interesting genus of oceanic sharks includes many species, many of which have oddly shaped jaws. One species, dubbed the Scissor-Tooth Shark, has a coil of teeth on its lower jaw instead of the normal jaw configuration for most sharks. They fed on ancestors of dolphins, whales, and probably other sharks and large fish of the late Carboniferous period. The jaws were filled with razor sharp teeth. Hold on, you may be wondering how a shark got to Kentucky. It's really a lot simpler than you may think. According to geologists, millions of years ago, much of North America was covered by water, and there was only a small piece of land which was above water. I think I speak for myself and you, perhaps, when I say that the shark is cool and interesting and big and all, but I'm glad it's extinct... pretty sure we'd need a bit of a bigger boat. (hehe Jaws FTW)

This is an artist's rendition of what the scissor-tooth shark, or Edestus Giganteus, could have looked like based on the fossils that have been found. Check out the size of those chompers compared to the man behind it!

I found another story  about a whale named Alice. Scientists are baffled by this one animal.  "What's Alice's problem?", you may be asking. She's a lonely whale. Most whales, with the sperm whales and blue whales being the exception, travel in pods of up to hundreds of whales. Alice has neither been seen in a pod, nor seen with a mate. Marine biologists aren't even sure if Alice is a female, and they can't classify her beyond the fact that she's a baleen whale. Now, she isn't reclusive or antisocial on purpose. She has an odd predicament, though. Her calls are too high-pitched to be heard or recognized by other whales! Alice's calls are about 35 to 40 hertz away from the average whale's calls. Scientists are trying to figure out why Alice has this strange call, and whether she has some sort of disorder or if she's the only known individual of some presumed to be extinct species of whale. And if they don't find a Mr. Alice, she might well be the last of her kind. I think it's a bit sad that this gentle giant might be alone for the rest of its life. What do you think about this? Hey, maybe this panda would like to be friends with Alice.