By LANCE STOCKHAUS

lstockhaus@dailynews.net

Lights, camera, mosasaurs.

Sternberg Museum of Natural History in Hays took part in taping a new series for the Discovery Channel.

The series, "Mega Beast," is scheduled to air in late 2009. The second show in the series features a beast found in western Kansas.

The mosasaur, (mosa, Latin for the Meuse River in France, and saurus, meaning lizard) was high on the list of beasts found throughout the world.

"We heard about them and went straight to Everhart. He literally wrote the book," said Bill Evashwick, writer and director of "Mega Beasts."

Michael Everhart, adjunct curator of paleontology at Sternberg, has written several books and papers about the water-dwelling creature.

"The mosasaur was dominant in the ocean, which is hard to explain since we are several hundred miles from large amounts of water," Everhart said.

Mosasaurs were the largest prehistoric monsters of the deep waters.

Some of the first mosasaur remains were found by George M. Sternberg more than 130 years ago.

The Discovery Channel series is finding out how these beasts survived and finding out things that few knew before.

"We want to strip off the skin and look deep into the bones," Evashwick said.

The Discovery Channel camera crew takes viewers to places where few visitors to the museum even know about.

Back rooms at Sternberg are filled with fossils, both complete and in pieces. Smaller pieces of mosasaurs tell the story of how they survived so many years ago.

"The only thing a mosasaur needed to be afraid of was a bigger mosasaur," Everhart said.

Everhart has been a part of other televison programs, talking about some of his other discoveries. But telling the story of the mosasaur is something he is passionate about.

"It's a good thing these animals were extinct before humans arrived," Everhart said. "I don't think it would have been something you would want to share the ocean with."