Trade show exhibits are intended to grab attention. I can’t remember a recent trade show that hasn’t had at least one magician, comedian, free-flowing bar, sky-high exhibit booth, cool video, or really loud music (neighboring booths always appreciate this last one, of course!)

However, I was not prepared for the sight that met my eyes as I went to pick up my badge at the RAI Center in Amsterdam prior to the European Association of Geoscientists and Engineers (EAGE) annual meeting. I wasn’t in the exhibit hall—I hadn’t even entered the building—when I was confronted by a huge inflatable plesiosaur-looking thing with fearsome teeth and a generally unfriendly demeanor. Since most EAGE attendees are looking for the remains of these types of creatures after they’ve been cooked into hydrocarbons, I wasn’t quite sure of the connection. Maybe there was a paleontology exhibit in a neighboring hall?

Not to worry, as it turned out – the exhibit was sponsored by Fugro to highlight its involvement in a major dig that unearthed the partial skull of a 50-ft (15.3-m) marine reptile on the Arctic archipelago of Svalbard. The find, named “Predator X,” is a new species of pliosaur that swam Jurassic oceans and doubtless terrified their other inhabitants.

The skull was excavated from the Arctic permafrost in June 2008.

Information on Fugro’s Web site indicates that the beast had a 33,000-lb bite. “Its anatomy, physiology, and hunting strategy all point to it being the ultimate predator — the most dangerous creature to patrol the Earth’s oceans,” the Web site states.

A team of scientists with unique areas of expertise joined forces on the expedition, funded by Fugro as well as ExxonMobil, StatoilHydro, and several Norwegian organizations. Included in the study were biologists and mechanical engineers to determine how the animal moved through the water; Dr. Patrick Druckenmiller from the University of Alaska Museum, who measured the pliosaur’s brain through CT scanning and determined it was comparable to the great white shark; and evolutionary biologist Dr. Greg Erickson from Florida State University, who worked with Dr. Jørn Hurum from Oslo at St. Augustine Alligator Farm and Zoological Park in Florida to calculate the creature’s bite force.

“Predator X would have had a bite force more than 10 times the bite force of any animal alive today and four times the bite force of a T-Rex,” the Web site states.

Even without the lure of prehistoric monsters, Svalbard offers a rewarding geological classroom, and Fugro recently organized a field trip comprising 47 geologists from 13 countries to visit its exposed surface. Still covered by glaciers driving deposits ahead of them, the archipelago has little vegetation to hide geologic features.

According to the Web site, “Svalbard offers geological sightings enabling the study of everything from core details to full seismic-scale outcrops. The main purpose of this field trip was to use these outcrops to illustrate depositional systems relevant for exploration and reservoir modeling.”

Meanwhile, Predator X is on a traveling exhibit displaying 200 years of fossils discovered on Svalbard and Bjørnøya from the collections of the University of Oslo’s Natural History Museum. Most of the fossils were collected on scientific expeditions from 1830 until today, and those expeditions and their participants will also be featured.

But it’s those teeth that really get your attention.