Hi!
Were these ancient beavers eight feet long??
....... http://www.christiananswers.net/dinosaurs/j-size1.html....."There
were even giant beavers (eight feet long)!"    (....perhaps the ate giant
clams...:-)  )

They found the coral reef off the Thailand Coast because of tips from
fishmen....  interesting...  There is a tiny pic of it on this site...
http://www.zeenews.com/znnew/articles.asp?aid=277718&sid=ENV

                                                  LaVerne


>From: "J. Ross Mayhew" <[log in to unmask]>
>Reply-To: Conchologists List <[log in to unmask]>
>To: [log in to unmask]
>Subject: New Coral Reef found off Thailand!!
>Date: Fri, 24 Feb 2006 02:34:28 -0400
>
>**Had** to pass this on the list, (although i will pass on the news that
>ancient beavers, sturdy and industrious national animal of Canada, once
>competed sucessfully with the dinosaurs.......couldn't find a way to
>make it shell related, although they may have eaten fresh water clams
>along with their reportedly fishy diet): New reefs of this size and
>importance are NOT discovered every day!! It would be great if a few
>divers could check it out for interesting mollusc fauna soon.
>
>http://www.enn.com/today.html?id=9942
>
>Coral Reef Discovered off Thailand Coast
>
>/February 23, 2006 -- By Michael Casey, Associated Press/ BANGKOK,
>Thailand -- A coral reef spanning several hundred acres and teeming with
>fish has been discovered off the coast of Thailand and should be given
>protected status, the World Wide Fund for Nature said Wednesday.
>
>Tipped off by local fishermen, WWF divers in January found what they say
>is a healthy, 667-acre reef in southern Thailand with over 30 genera of
>hard corals, and at least 112 species of fish.
>
>Among the fish species identified, the WWF said, was a type of parrot
>fish first discovered in Sri Lanka and never before seen in Thailand,
>and a species of the sweet lips fish previously only found in the
>Similan Islands.
>
>The reef is off the coast of Khao Lak, a popular tourist destination on
>the Andaman Sea coast of Thailand.
>
>"I believe discussions with fishermen over a wider area will lead us to
>discover even more important reefs, not yet mapped or protected by the
>authorities" said Songpol Tippayawong, head of the WWF Thailand Marine
>and Coastal Conservation Unit, in a statement.
>
>"This reef is easily accessible to dive operators from nearby Khao Lak,
>and if managed properly can become a prominent local dive site while
>also contributing an important source of income to the local community,"
>he said.
>
>WWF said that it was working closely with Thailand's Department of
>Marine and Coastal Resources, the Department of National Parks, local
>communities and dive operators to ensure that the reef is properly
>managed, which could lead to it being included in a marine national park.
>
>Sombat Poovachiranon, a marine biologist with the Department of Marine
>and Coastal Resources, said the reef was not on any of his department's
>maps.
>
>"We are looking forward to doing a survey in the area," Sombat said.
>"It's quite a large area. In my opinion, this should be a marine
>protected area. But we have to talk to the local communities first."
>
>The discovery is a dose of good news for the state of reefs, which have
>been battered by overfishing, development and more recently the 2004
>tsunami, which heavily damaged them in Thailand, Indonesia, Sri Lanka
>and India.
>
>A United Nations report in December found that close to a third of the
>world's corals have vanished, and 60 percent are expected to be lost by
>2030. More than a third of all mangroves have disappeared, with the rate
>of loss greater than that of tropical rain forests, the report found.
>
>A report released Monday from the Global Coral Reef Monitoring Network
>found that most coral reefs in the path of the December 2004 tsunami
>escaped "serious damage" and should recover in less than 10 years,
>though much will depend on local government's protecting marine ecosystems.
>
>The report found that reefs in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, India and Thailand
>were hardest hit by massive waves with damage reaching up to 30 percent
>in some places. But much like earlier studies, it found that human
>activities like illegal fishing and climate change pose the greatest
>risk to the future of these reefs.
>
>/Source: Associated Press/
>
>- Ross Mayhew.

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