10: Antarctic Pterosaur In 2018, a terrible fire ravaged the building
that housed Brazil’s National Museum Collection of fossils.
Millions of valuable artifacts were either damaged or lost completely.
But now, a new discovery has been made from the blackened rubble.
The bone of an animal from 70 million years ago has been identified and scientifically
described.
And as it turns out, this discovery is pretty amazing!
The fossil is the first evidence of a terrifying pterosaur that ruled the skies of Antarctica
just as the age of the dinosaurs was drawing to a close.
As you may already know, pterosaurs were the first vertebrates in the world to learn how
to fly.
This particular fossil remnant belonged to either an azhdarchid or pteranodontian, two
different varieties of pterosaur.
Both were common during the Cretaceous period, back when Antarctica was warm and covered
in forests.
It was the ideal habitat for huge, reptilian fliers.
The issue with finding fossils of these particular creatures is that just like modern birds,
pterosaurs had very thin bones.
Their bones were so delicate that it's pretty rare for any of them to have stayed solid
for millions of years as fossils.
Yet even with just a single bone, paleontologists can figure out a lot.
For example, the single bone that survived the museum fire came from a creature that
had a wingspan of at least 16 feet (4.8 m).
And while we know there were other types of flying dinosaurs in Antarctica, this is the
only one we have physical proof of.
That is, except for another bone that was found in the 1990s, belonging to a miniature
pterosaur only about the size of a modern crow.
It lived in the Transantarctic Mountains over 190 million years ago.
9: Giant Swimming Head Monster The Titanokorys Gainesi is known simply as
the giant swimming head.
It was a primitive arthropod that lived on the floor of the ocean about half a billion
years before today.
That's 500 million years ago, during a time when the oceans were filled with creatures
that we would think of today as terrifying aliens.
They looked almost nothing like the marine animals we’re familiar with in modern oceans.
There's no better example than the fossilized remains of the giant swimming head monster.
This particular arthropod was from a smaller, more distinct group called radiodonts that
were prevalent during the Cambrian explosion of 541 million years ago.
The Cambrian explosion was really the start of all complex life, when there was a massive
and inexplicable burst of complicated organisms that suddenly appeared on the planet, mostly
in the water.
This thing was a beast among them, absolutely gigantic.
Whereas most of the marine animals only grew to about the size of a person's pinky finger,
this thing was 1.6 feet, (.48 meters) long.
It would have been comparable to a person 30 feet (9.1 m) tall being born today – just
an absolute massive shift of size, potentially an accident of nature.
Jean-Bernard Caron from the Royal Ontario Museum said the sheer size of the animal is
literally mind boggling.
It's one of the biggest things ever found from the Cambrian period.
And if we were to encounter it today, it would be bewildering.
It had multifaceted eyes, a mouth that looked like a slice of pineapple, and a pair of spiky
claws underneath its head that it used to catch prey.
Its body also had a series of flaps to help it swim.
But really, it looked like a giant swimming head with a hard carapace for a helmet, like
a crab or a turtle without the rest of its limbs.
8: The Dragon The fossil of a dragon has just been found
in the UK, dating back 180 million years.
It wasn't a dragon like you or I might think of them, but an extinct species of dolphin-like
animal called sea dragons by scientists.
It's not even the fact that researchers have found the bones of an actual sea dragon that
make the discovery so fascinating.
It's the fact that the dragon is being called the most complete fossil found in the United
Kingdom – ever!
The sea dragon, a type of ichthyosaur, was about 32 feet (9.75 m) in length.
Its skull alone weighed a ton.
In life, it would have looked very similar to a dolphin, except much bigger, with much
larger teeth, and with more of an appetite.
And even though there have been plenty of amazing dinosaur fossils found throughout
the UK, even other sea dragon fossils dating back to the early 1800s, this is the biggest
and most intact.
The fossil is complete from the very tip of the animal’s nose to the very tip of its
tail.
This is something you just don't typically see with paleontology.
But because the discovery is so new, it's still going to take some time for scientists
to get the bones out of the dirt and back to the lab.
Then hopefully we'll find out more about these fascinating animals.
What we know so far is that sea dragons primarily ate squid and octopuses, and they went extinct
95 million years ago due to unknown ecological changes.
7: The God of Death Whale 43 million years ago, there was a creature
living on land and sea that scientists are calling the god of death whale.
It was a terrific beast, a prehistoric whale that had four legs and teeth like railroad
spikes.
The fossil of this monster has been found in the Egyptian desert and was named after
the Egyptian god of death, Anubis.
It's a previously unknown species that was over 10 feet long (3.04 m), a kind of missing
link between prehistoric whales and our modern whales.
The obvious takeaway here is that the whale had four legs and could walk on land.
Just try to imagine a killer whale that could jump out of the ocean, run across the shore,
snatch a sunbathing tourist in its jaws, and then run back into the ocean and swim away.
That's what people would be dealing with today if these monstrous cretins were still alive.
And that's not even a dramatization.
Cetacean paleobiologist Abdullah Gohar says the whale had very powerful jaws that were
capable of tearing apart its victims.
It also had a feeding style like land raptors, meaning it was fast, agile, and ruthless.
Perhaps this terrifying predator of long ago would serve as a good inspiration for a modern
horror movie.
What do you think?
6: Monster Milliped A giant millipede roughly the size of a car
was discovered in England.
It was uncovered on a beach near the city of Northumberland and is terrifying enough
to give you chills.
These days, millipedes are no more than a few inches or centimeters long.
Even in Australia where they discovered a huge millipede with 1306 legs, it was only
three inches (7.6 cm) in length.
Yet the fossil discovered in England shows evidence of a millipede over 9 feet (2.7 m)
long and about as girthy as an automobile.
The only good news is that the giant nightmare bug lived 300 million years ago.
Its discovery was a one-of-a-kind fluke.
Its fossil was embedded in a block of sandstone that broke off from a cliff and landed on
the beach in 2018.
When the piece of sandstone hit the sand, it cracked open and exposed the fossil.
When a former PhD student walked by, he could see the fossilized millipede clear as day.
That was four years ago.
Scientists have been studying the fossil relentlessly since.
They now know it was the oldest and biggest millipede that ever existed – at least that
we’ve found evidence of.
They've named it Arthropleura.
It lived way before the dinosaurs, it could grow to be up to 110 pounds (49.9 kg), and
it lasted about 45 million years before going extinct for unknown reasons.
But probably it's size.
5: A Brand New Dino In Missouri, scientists have identified the
bones of a brand-new dinosaur.
It's a type of duck-billed dinosaur named Parrosaurus missouriensis, and it was a true
beast among dinos.
This thing grew to a length of over 35 feet (10.66 m) as an adult.
Guy Darrough from the Sainte Genevieve Museum Learning Center says its body was about the
size of a Volkswagen.
He’s also compared the importance of the discovery to that of King Tut’s tomb for
paleontologists.
Because not only did they find a giant new dinosaur, the researchers also uncovered what
could be a new hotbed for fossils.
Researchers believe this particular part of Missouri may have been the location of a mass
death occurrence.
Because they found so many bones belonging to these extinct duck-billed dinosaurs, they
think an entire herd died all at once.
They then washed into a lagoon or waterhole, where they became fossilized.
What do you think could have caused this mass die-off?
4: The Social Dinosaur New research is suggesting that dinosaurs
actually lived in social herds 193 million years ago.
When I say social herds, think about dog packs or flocks of birds, or any animals that move
around in groups, including lions and buffalo.
While most depictions in movies show dinosaurs as solitary, vengeful hunters, the truth is
likely quite different.
Scientists looked at over 100 almost perfectly preserved dinosaur eggs, along with the skeletons
of 80 juvenile and adult dinosaurs from a single fossil bed in Patagonia.
The eggs and the skeletons belonged to a type of plant-eating dinosaur classified as a sauropodomorph.
These were the predecessors of the long-necked sauropods that evolved millions of years later.
What scientists found truly interesting is that the fossils were grouped by age.
The eggs were discovered in one area, the hatchlings in another, the juveniles in a
different location nearby, and the adult dinosaurs spread throughout the site in pairs.
What this suggests is that dinosaurs practiced age segregation.
They were likely part of a social herd with a complex hierarchy structure.
This would mean that dinosaurs lived in their own communities, shared common nesting grounds,
and even sent their juveniles to socialize together in primitive, dinosaur schools.
3: Giant Sea Lizard At the same time that the Tyrannosaurus rex
was roaming across the land as a terrifying apex predator, there was a giant sea lizard
doing the same thing in the ocean.
This aquatic version of the T. rex, a horrible beast known as a mosasaur, lived just like
their predatory land cousins until the asteroid hit the Earth and most existing life forms
got wiped out.
These ferocious sea monsters made their first appearance in the world's oceans 98 million
years before today.
Over the next 30 million years, give or take a century or two, they diversified.
They turned into many different aquatic predators that feasted on everything from coastal dinosaurs
to each other.
For anyone who lives in North Dakota, you'll be interested to know that these giant sea
lizards probably lived in your neighborhood.
Their fossils have been found in the Hell Creek Formation, famous for more popular dinosaur
fossil discoveries from beasts like the tyrannosaurus and triceratops.
It was a forested and swampy region 66 million years ago.
But before that, it was once an ocean.
Scientists call it the Western Interior Seaway, a huge ocean-like river that split North America
in half.
But as the sea levels changed, the water began to drain.
The ocean got smaller, the water became acidic, all the animals died, and mosasaurs ended
up buried under what is now North Dakota.
2: Monstrous Mammals Before the asteroid killed the dinosaurs,
they were so dominant throughout the world That they prevented mammals from evolving
any larger than a badger.
At least, this is what paleontologists thought for years.
They thought mammals were never able to move forward along their evolutionary path until
dinosaurs died out because they simply didn't have the opportunity.
But a new study has suggested something different.
Researchers with the University of Oxford are now saying that it was actually mammals
that kept mammals from evolving.
They believe that during the age of dinosaurs, mammals diversified and spread at such a rapid
rate that they had no chance to really sink their claws into the ecosystem and start to
evolve.
By the time the asteroid hit, mammals had just been getting started.
There's a very good chance that mammals could have actually overtaken dinosaurs had the
asteroid never shown up.
For example, there were already animals like beavers and otters 150 million years ago.
There were even insect-eaters like aardvarks, and sugar glider-like mammals that glided
from tree to tree.
The truth isn't that dinosaurs prevented humans from evolving, but that if it hadn't been
for the asteroid, we very well could have evolved tens of millions of years sooner.
Maybe, even alongside our dinosaur friends.
1: The Sea Turtles of Saskatoon Sea turtles once lived in the Canadian province
of Saskatchewan.
You wouldn't think it looking at the landscape of the prairies today.
There’s no ocean for hundreds and hundreds of miles in any direction, nor is there the
slightest hint of a mountain or even a hill.
Yet paleontologist Emily Bamforth has discovered proof that ancient sea turtles were swimming
around Saskatchewan millions of years ago.
Particularly, during the late Cretaceous period.
Emily discovered what she claims is the very first sea turtle fossil found in the province
back in 2016.
Between 100 and 66 million years ago, this chunk of Canada was part of the same Western
Interior Seaway as North Dakota, which we talked about earlier.
It makes perfect sense that there were sea turtles swimming around here.
But what’s really cool is that sea turtles were pretty much exactly the same as they
are today.
They lived through the mass extinction after the asteroid and all these millions of years
later, they’re still just sea turtles.
It’ll be a sad day if these majestic reptiles ever perish once and for all due to human-caused
pollution.
Especially after all they’ve gone through to stay alive for so long.
Which prehistoric creature from the video is your favorite?
Let me know in the comments and thanks a lot for watching.
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