large croc trapped and a new Mammoth find

Suspected man-eater crocodile trapped

Ramaninder K Bhatia,

VADODARA: It was a sheer 'primeval' fear that people of Kodaravaya village in Waghodia taluka, foresters and wildlife NGOs felt when they took their first look at the 13-feet-long giant of a crocodile, allegedly a man-eater, when it tried to break the cage it was caught in, on Saturday morning. The reptile is believed to be the one which had killed a teenager, Kaushalya on September 29, brought to mind images of another man-eater, but much-larger and ferocious 20-feet plus sized, Nile crocodile of Burundi, named Gustave. It was the central feature of 2007-make, Hollywood movie 'Primeval', after it assumed the reputation of having killed over 300 humans in the war-torn country. The one caught at Kodaravaya village was no match for Gustave, and nobody knows the headcount of this reptile's human victims, if any, other than the teenager-- whose body was found a day later with two feet and a hand missing, which were presumably eaten by the crocodile-but its sight was enough to send a chill down their spine, especially when it broke the iron-meshed trap in aggression."I have never seen such a huge crocodile," said R Wadhavana, a volunteer with a wildlife NGO who has rescued many crocodiles in and around Vadodara. "It must have weighed almost 300 kg and 25-30 people had to help lift the cage on to the tractor." Local forester O J Garia, who later took the crocodile to Vanchetna Kendra in Darjipura also said, that he had not seen this huge a crocodile in his entire career.

Read rest here: http://timesofindia.indiatimes.com/city/vadodara/Suspected-man-eater-crocodile-trapped/articleshow/16705430.cms

Mammoth carcass found in Siberia

A well-preserved mammoth carcass has been found by an 11-year-old boy in the permafrost of northern Siberia.The remains were discovered at the end of August in Sopochnaya Karga, 3,500km (2,200 miles) northeast of Moscow.A team of experts from St Petersburg then spent five days in September extracting the body from frozen mud.The mammoth is estimated to have been around 16 years old when it died; it stood 2m tall and weighed 500kg.It has been named Zhenya, after Zhenya Salinder, the 11-year-old who found the carcass while walking his dogs in the area.Alexei Tikhonov, from the St Petersburg Zoology Institute, who led the team excavating the mammoth, said this specimen could either have been killed by Ice Age humans, or by a rival mammoth.He added that it was well preserved for an adult specimen.

Read rest here: http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-19848109