Remains of a bus-sized prehistoric "monster" reptile found on a remote Arctic island may be a new species never before recorded, researchers said Tuesday.

Initial excavation on the Svalbard islands, 300 miles north of Norway's mainland, in August yielded the remains, teeth, skull fragments and vertebrae of a reptile estimated to measure nearly 40 feet long, said Joern Harald Hurum of the University of Oslo. It appears to be the same species as a sea predator whose remains were found nearby last year.

Hurum's team described those 150-million-year-old remains as belonging to a short-necked plesiosaur measuring more than 30 feet -- "as long as a bus ... with teeth larger than cucumbers." It was a voracious reptile often described as the Tyrannosaurus rex of the oceans.

The team plans to present more detailed findings next year. To see an artistic rendering, www.nhm.uio.no/pliosaurus/index.html.

A RECORD DEAL: $228,484 FOR MOZART

A leaf from Mozart's sketch for the Sinfonia Concertante in E flat sold Tuesday for a record price of $228,484 for a single page in the master's hand.

"The Sinfonia Concertante was Mozart's first truly great masterpiece," said Simon Maguire, a senior specialist at Sotheby's.

Maggs Bros. Ltd. of London bought the manuscript for an unidentified client, Sotheby's said. The previous record was $184,000 for a sheet bearing the notes for the opening Rondo K.386 in A major, sold in 1998.

Sotheby's said that only two other leaves of the manuscript of the Concertante survive. It was composed in 1779 when Mozart was 23.

OLYMPIC PRACTICE: CHEERING SECTION

The drills are about to begin. With his right hand, Zhang Ran hoists a yellow flag above his head, much like a sailor directing traffic on an aircraft carrier.

He's facing 150 sales clerks sitting in tidy rows, hand-picked by their labor union to learn the approved cheers for next year's Beijing Olympics.

"Zhongguo, Zhongguo -- ha, ha, ha. Zhongguo, Zhongguo bi sheng," the crowd shouts. "Jia you, jia you." Rough translation: "China, China -- ha, ha, ha. China, China must win. Let's go, let's go."

One of about 20 cheers approved by authorities, it's drilled a half-dozen times. Zhang also leads a cheer in basic English: "Come on, come on -- go, go."

He said, "There will be foreigners attending, so we have to take this into account."

Welcome to the "Beijing Civilized Workers Cheering Squad," a public-education program to teach sportsmanship, part of a larger Olympic etiquette campaign to show off a polite, prosperous and powerful China.

Nobody doubts that China's venues will glitter when the Olympics open. It's other matters that cause worry -- people's manners and their knowledge of many unfamiliar sports, which could lead to cheering at the wrong moment or cell phones going off as swimmers teeter on the starting blocks.

Zhang repeats four major points during the 2½-hour session: Don't insult former wartime enemy Japan; don't swear; respect the referee; and don't snap indiscriminate photos.

"Civilization equals order," Zhang said. "We need to express the same slogans, think the same and behave the same way. That's how we become civilized."

Chinese are ecstatic about the Olympics. Though the cheering lessons are highly programmed, Liu Aimin, 48 -- a generation older than almost everyone else -- springs with gusto from his chair to practice the wave. "The younger people make me feel so much younger," he said.

YOU CAN VOTE NOW: IT'S WORD PLAY

It's that time of year again-- time to vote for Merriam-Webster's Word of the Year for 2007.

Voting ends Friday and the winning word will be announced later this month.

The finalists are: Apathetic, babymoon, blamestorm, charlatan, conundrum, cruft, eleemosynary, facebook, hypocrite, linkability, melancholy, Pecksniffian, pretentious, pugnacious, quixotic, sardoodledom, sputum, subpoena, vanity sizing, and wOOt.

For the record, last year's landslide winner, truthiness -- first uttered by Stephen Colbert -- means to describe things that a person claims to know intuitively without regard to evidence, logic, intellectual examination, or facts.

Vote at www.m-w.com/info/07words.htm.

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