This week UNIS and Svalbard Museum offer lectures by Dr. Jørn Hurum on the world famous fossil Ida, Predator X and other sea monsters that once upon a time roamed the Svalbard waters. The lectures will be on Tuesday and Thursday night and are open to the public.

Text: Eva Therese Jenssen

Dr. Jørn Hurum of the Natural History Museum at the University of Oslo recently became engaged as an adjunct associate professor at UNIS and Svalbard Museum.

Jørn Hurum became world famous when he revealed the fossil Ida earlier this year. Dr. Hurum will in his lectures this week talk about how he and his team discovered the fossil and what implications the find has for our understanding of the history of evolution.

Dr. Jørn Hurum presented the fossil Ida to the world earlier this year and this week you can learn more about her. (Photo: Natural History Museum/UiO).

But Dr. Hurum has also a strong connection to Svalbard. Over the last couple of years he and his team of paleontologists have been visiting Svalbard every summer for fossil excavations in an area north of Longyearbyen and Adventfjorden.

Meet Predator X
Weighing in at 45 tons, 15 meters long and packing a 15 000 kg bite force, this predator controlled the waters around Svalbard. The partial fossil that Dr. Jørn Hurum and his team unearthed last year in Svalbard is now confirmed as one of the largest marine predators ever found. This T-Rex of the ocean patrolled the Jurassic seas 147 million years ago.

It was in the summer of 2008 that an international team of paleontologists, led by Dr. Jørn Hurum, unearthed the partial skull of 15 m long marine reptile at the northern side of Knorringfjellet, just north of Adventfjorden. The marine reptile, nicknamed “Predator X” is a new species of pliosaur.

You can learn more about Ida, Predator X, and other sea monsters from Jørn Hurum on Tuesday and Thursday evening. In addition Dr. Hurum will talk about the Pantodont, a mammal that lived here around 60 million years ago, and the Pantodont foot prints found inside Mine 7 in 2006.

Both lectures will be in English and held in the auditorium “Møysalen”.

Predator X roamed the waters around Svalbard some 147 million years ago. (Ill.: Atlantic Productions).