These animals were the top predators living in what was then a relatively cool, deep sea.

Palaeontologists from the University of Oslo's Natural History Museum discovered the fossils during fieldwork in a remote part of Spitsbergen, the largest island in the Svalbard archipelago.

Jorn Harald Hurum, co-director of the dig, said he was taken aback by the sheer density of fossil remains in one area.

"You can't walk for more than 100m without finding a skeleton. That's amazing anywhere in the world," he told BBC News.

Dr Dave Martill, a palaeontologist at the University of Portsmouth, UK, commented: "These sites are very unusual. To find that many individuals is a remarkable thing - that's a bonanza."

Ichthyosaurs bore a passing resemblance to modern dolphins, but they used an upright tail fin to propel themselves through the water.

Plesiosaurs are said to fit descriptions of Scotland's mythical Loch Ness monster. They used two sets of powerful flippers for swimming and came in two varieties - one with a small head and very long neck, and another with a large head and short neck.

The short-necked varieties are known as pliosaurs.

The discovery of a gigantic pliosaur, nicknamed The Monster, was one of the most remarkable discoveries of the expedition.

Its skeleton has dinner-plate-sized neck vertebrae, and the lower jaw has teeth as big as bananas.

Tooth in the neck

The skeleton is not yet fully excavated, but its skull is about 3m long, suggesting the body could be more than 8m from the tip of its nose to its tail.

"What's amazing here is that it looks like we have a complete skeleton. No other complete pliosaur skeletons are known anywhere in the world," said Dr Hurum.

The researchers even found evidence of an attack on one of the creatures. An ichthyosaur tooth is embedded in a neck vertebra from one plesiosaur belonging to the genus Kimmerosaurus.

The fossil hoard comprises 21 long-necked plesiosaurs, six ichthyosaurs and one short-necked plesiosaur. The bones were unearthed in fine-grained sedimentary rock called black shale.

"Everything we're finding is articulated. It's not single bones here and there, and bits and pieces - these are complete skeletons," said Dr Hurum.

After death, the carcasses came to rest in mud at the bottom of the deep ocean, where little or no oxygen was present.

Dr Hurum said an unusual chemistry of the mud could have been responsible for the remarkable preservation of the specimens: "Something happened with the chemistry that's really good for bone preservation. Some skeletons are pale white even though they're in black shale - they look like 'roadkill'."

The marine reptiles found in the Norwegian archipelago are very similar to ones known from southern England. Dr Hurum said the animals could have been living in the same ocean and he now plans to compare the Arctic finds with those from Britain.

The Svalbard excavation was led by Dr Hurum and Hans Arne Nakrem, also of Oslo's Natural History Museum. The museum plans to return to the field site in the summer of 2007 to resume excavations.

It may even have been killed by humans, who were living at the once water-rich site during the same period.

Jean-Marie Le Tensorer of the University of Basel commented: "It was not known that the dromedary was present in the Middle East more than 10,000 years ago.

"The camel's shoulders stood three metres high and it was around four metres tall; as big as a giraffe or an elephant. Nobody knew that such a species had existed," he said.

Kingsize camels

Professor Le Tensorer, who has been excavating at the desert site in Kowm since 1999, said the first large bones were found some years ago but were only confirmed as belonging to a camel after more bones from several parts of the same animal were recently discovered.

The human tooth is robust and Neanderthal-like
Between 2005 and 2006, more than 40 bone fragments of giant camels were found by the team.

The big species has been found as far back as 150,000 years ago. But fossils from other species of camel have been unearthed at the site dating to one million years ago.

Human remains from the same period as the giant camel have also been discovered at the site. The radius (forearm) and tooth have been taken to Switzerland, where they are undergoing anthropological analysis.

"The bone is that of a Homo sapiens, or modern man, but the tooth is extremely archaic, similar to that of a Neanderthal. We don't know yet what it is exactly. Do we have a very old Homo sapiens or a Neanderthal?" said Professor Le Tensorer.

"We expect to find more bones that would help determine what kind of man it was."

El Kowm, the site where the remains were discovered along with flint and stone weapons, is a 20km-wide (14 miles) gap between two mountain ranges with natural springs.

Police searched the houses of all four suspects and confiscated incriminating documents.

Many of the details of the affair were revealed in a series of Haaretz articles on the subject, as well as Channel 2 TV's investigative documentary series "Fact."

In May 2005, the State Comptroller's Office slammed the hospitals over the illegal experimentation in a report.

According to a report issued by the investigations department of the Health Ministry and exposed by Haaretz, the hospitals in Gedera and Rehovot conducted illegal and unethical testing on thousands of elderly patients for years.

During one of the incidents described, twelve patients died either during the experiments or shortly after they took place, but these incidents were not reported to the Health Ministry or investigated, as is required by law.

The Health Ministry's director general filed a complaint with police following an internal inquiry into the affair and the fraud squad confiscated from the hospitals many documents pertaining to the experimentation.

The ministry's investigation revealed that some of the patients were included in the experiments without providing their consent, while some of them suffered from severe mental damage, which prevented them from being legally capable of providing consent.

According to the report, some of the tests did not even yield any medically or scientifically beneficial results. Furthermore, some of the experiments were conducted despite top doctors' warnings that they were illegal or unethical.

The report voices harsh criticism of the Helsinki committee at the hospitals, responsible for approving the experiments and failing to protect the public's best interests.

The ministry's report further condemns the hospital's management for failing to address the complaints and information handed to it over the past few years, describing the flawed medical procedures.

According to the report, some doctors received promotions, both in their professional and academic careers, on the basis of the illegal tests. In some cases, the tests were used as the basis for research studies published in local and international medical journals.

At least four doctors at the hospitals were named as experts in Geriatrics based on the illegal tests they allegedly conducted along with their colleagues.

Another study finds that taking omega-3 fatty acid supplements slows cognitive decline in some patients with very mild Alzheimer's disease. However, supplements do not appear to affect people with more advanced cases of the disease, according to a team of Swedish researchers.

Both reports appear in the online October issue of the Archives of Neurology.

For the diet study, Scarmeas's team collected data on almost 2,000 people averaging 76 years of age. Of these, 194 had developed Alzheimer's. The researchers analyzed each person's diet during the previous year and scored the diet based on how closely it followed what's known as the Mediterranean diet, which also includes mild-to-moderate drinking and little intake of red meat. Scores ranged from zero to 9. Higher scores were given for closely following a Mediterranean diet.

People who closely followed that regimen had a significantly lower risk for Alzheimer's disease, the researchers found. For each additional point on the diet score, risk for Alzheimer's was reduced by 19 to 24 percent.

In fact, people in the top one-third of diet scores had 68 percent lower risk of developing Alzheimer's disease, compared with people in the bottom third. In addition, people in the middle third had a 53 percent lower risk of developing the disease.

While the jury is still out on whether a Mediterranean diet actually protects people from developing Alzheimer's disease, Scarmeas believes that the other health benefits of the diet are clear.

"It seems that this diet is [health] protective," Scarmeas said. "Taking into account that this diet is protective for other conditions such as coronary heart disease, heart attack, high blood pressure, obesity and a series of cancers, it seems to make sense to follow this diet anyway, and the diet may also protect from Alzheimer's disease."

In the second report, a team led by Dr. Yvonne Freund-Levi from the Karolinska Institutet in Stockholm, looked at the effects of omega-3 fatty acids supplements on 204 patients with Alzheimer's disease.

After six months, among the 174 people who completed the trial, the researchers found no difference in cognitive decline among people taking omega-3 fatty acids supplements at different doses or placebo.

However, for a subgroup of 32 patients with very mild cognitive impairment at the beginning of the study, those taking the supplements experienced less cognitive decline compared with those who took placebo, the researchers found.

And when patients who took placebo during the first six months were given omega-3 fatty acids supplements, their cognitive decline decreased during the second six months of the trial.

"The mechanisms by which omega-3 fatty acids could interfere in Alzheimer's disease pathophysiologic features are not clear, but since anti-inflammatory effects are an important part of the profile of fish oils, they are conceivable also for Alzheimer's disease," the researchers write. "It is possible that when the disease is clinically apparent, the neuropathologic involvement is too advanced to be substantially attenuated by anti-inflammatory treatment."

One expert said that, given the other health benefits of fish oil, it certainly can't hurt patients to take supplements.

"I am happy to tell people that if they want to reduce their risk for Alzheimer's, they should reduce their cardiovascular disease risk factors and take fish oil," said Greg M. Cole, a neuroscientist at the Greater Los Angeles VA Healthcare System, and the associate director of the Alzheimer's Disease Research Center at UCLA's David Geffen School of Medicine.

A second expert agreed that diet probably does influence the disease.

"The papers share a focus on the idea that diet plays a role in Alzheimer's, a consensus that has been building for the past five or six years," said Dr. Sam Gandy, the chair of the Medical and Scientific Advisory Council at the Alzheimer's Association and director of the Farber Institute for Neurosciences at Thomas Jefferson University.

"The common thread is that both papers point toward intervention at the earliest moment having a greater effect and the suggestion that prevention may have the greatest effect of all," Gandy said.

"Once the gooey amyloid material has accumulated and poisoned nerve cells and the cells have died, it is very hard to think seriously about repairing damage that severe," he added.

The juice, produced by Bolthouse Farms in Bakersfield, Calif., was ordered off North American store shelves late last month after four cases of botulism in the United States were linked to toxic carrot juice.

A Florida woman has been in hospital, unresponsive, since mid-September. Three people in Georgia suffered respiratory failure and are on ventilators since drinking carrot juice a month ago.

Botulism is rare, but it can be fatal and must be treated quickly. Symptoms can include blurred vision, slurred speech, difficulty swallowing and paralysis, Toronto Public Health said.

In severe cases, the paralysis can restrict breathing, forcing patients on to ventilators. There's no word whether the Toronto patients are on ventilators.

Toronto Public Health has warned the public to avoid drinking three brands of carrot juice. The federal regulator, the Canadian Food Inspection Agency, issued a product recall covering the three brands on Sept. 30.

Bolthouse Farms bottles the three brands. The recalled products, all sold in both one-litre and 450-millilitre containers, are:

* Bolthouse Farms 100% Carrot Juice.
* Earthbound Farm Organic Carrot Juice.
* President's Choice Organics 100% Pure Carrot Juice.

Products with a "best by" date up to Nov. 11 have been recalled.

Consumers who have any brand should "take it out of the fridge, dump it down the sink," Rea said.

Bolthouse said the cases may have resulted from improper refrigeration. Carrot juice is low in acids, so bacteria can grow unless it's kept below 7 C.

This most recent news of food-poisoning comes after California-grown spinach tainted with a potentially deadly strain of E. coli caused grocers to pull the vegetable from shelves last month. It is suspected in three recent U.S. deaths.

The Canadian Food Inspection Agency issued a warning on Sept. 15, advising consumers not to eat fresh spinach from the U.S., including spinach that is bagged, loose or in salad blends.

Juice recall follows spinach concerns

Last week, the U.S. Food and Drug Administration announced it was safe to eat U.S.-packaged spinach again, but Canadian health officials have not yet followed suit.

And on Sunday, Nunes Company Inc. in California's Salinas Valley initiated a voluntary recall of green leaf lettuce purchased last week under the Foxy brand name. Foxy is one of the largest suppliers of lettuce, celery, broccoli, vegetable platters and stir-fry mixes in the United States.

The company made the move after concerns about E. coli contamination of its popular brand of lettuce.

While Nunes Company investigators have not found E. coli bacteria on the lettuce itself, company president Tom Nunes Jr. said it was a precautionary measure.

"We're just reacting to a water test only. We know there's generic E. coli on it, but we're not sure what that means," he said. "We're being extra careful. This is precautionary."