10 Extinct Animals With Amazing Abilities - Alternative View

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10 Extinct Animals With Amazing Abilities - Alternative View
10 Extinct Animals With Amazing Abilities - Alternative View

Video: 10 Extinct Animals With Amazing Abilities - Alternative View

Video: 10 Extinct Animals With Amazing Abilities - Alternative View
Video: 10 Extinct Animals Scientists are Going to Revive 2024, March
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Studying animals that have long been extinct is not easy. And yet paleontologists have managed to extract something over the years. Only now, new finds in the past show that certain species were so strange that scientists do not know what to do with them.

Homo erectus could build boats

When you think of man's long-standing ancestor - Homo erectus, or Homo erectus - the last thing you think of is the seafaring species. Yes, they migrated from Africa to Asia and beyond, but it was on foot?

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In 1998, scientists dated stone tools found in Flores as 800,000 years old. Hence, they were made by H. erectus. The ancient hominids had to somehow cross the deep, turbulent waters to get to the island; for this they needed some kind of primitive boats or rafts. But it is believed that H. erectus did not have the mental faculties necessary to build and operate boats.

While the question of whether the Flores tools actually involve boat building remains controversial, other recent finds in Crete leave no room for doubt. In 2011, scientists found 130,000-year-old stone tools there. These instruments are believed to have been created by Homo erectus. Crete, of course, could only be reached by sea.

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Opabinia regalis - a laughing stock for paleontologists

Opabinia regalis was first described in 1912. This tiny floating anthropod is very strangely designed, to put it mildly. A reconstruction from 1930 showed O. regalis floating upside down (pardon the pun). In 1972, a better reconstruction appeared. But when she was first introduced at a meeting of paleontologists, they laughed hard, thinking it was a joke.

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This 505 million year old anomalocar has five stalked eyes and a flexible filamentous proboscis that is topped with a claw. O. regalis used this paw to send prey into its back mouth. The body, which may seem quite appropriate for this era, had 15 segments. Each segment had a fin structure on each side, presumably for swimming. Some paleontologists point out that these as yet unrecognized triangular features on the body of O. regalis were tiny limbs for walking on the seabed. However, the rest disagree with them.

Ounalashkastylus tomidai was a living vacuum cleaner

In 2015, fossils were discovered on Unalaska Island that turned out to belong to a previously unknown species of mammal that lived 23 million years ago. Ounalashkastylus tomidai was a hippopotamus-sized herbivore that lived off the coast of the island. A child was found among the fossils, indicating a population at Unalaska.

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The most unique characteristic of O. tomidai was the manner in which food was consumed. "Behemoth" pulled his jaws together and sucked the vegetation through his mouth, helping with powerful muscles. He ate sea grass, seaweed and other plants. More mammals known for this manner of eating food, scientists have not met. O. tomidai belongs to Desmostylia, the only order of marine mammals that has left no surviving species. On land he moved like a big sloth, and in the water he swam like a polar bear.

Tyrannosaurus rex vision was one of the best

You probably remember from the movie Jurassic Park that Tyrannosaurus rex is only able to see moving objects, but this is a deceitful pile that was piled up by one of the Triceratops in the same movie. In fact, T. rex's eyesight was one of the best among animals in general.

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T. rex had a binocular range of 55 degrees, which is even greater than that of a modern hawk. A large binocular range means both better depth perception and better ability to see objects - even stationary ones. The dinosaur had vision, 13 times sharper than human vision. (An eagle has 3.6 times better vision than a human.) T. rex could distinguish objects up to 6 kilometers away, while we can distinguish them from just 1.6 kilometers away.

It is believed that this level of vision supports the idea that T. rex was a purely hunter, not a predator. As the T. rex evolved, its eyes grew larger, its muzzle smaller, and its cheeks sagging. The vision was getting better and better.

Hallucigenia had teeth

Hallucigenia is a genus of tiny, worm-like creatures less than 1 centimeter long that lived 505 million years ago. As their name suggests, they looked extremely strange, showing spines along their backs and small legs along the belly. When hallucigenia was first described, paleontologists assumed that the thorns were the legs, and the legs were the tentacles. They also decided that the backside of hallucigenia is the front.

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In 2015, the head of hallucigenia was finally identified and examined under an electron microscope. In addition to having a pair of eyes, the worm surprised scientists with a mouth lined with teeth, as well as needle-like teeth lining the throat of hallucinations. The teeth in the mouth are believed to have facilitated absorption by grinding and drawing in food. And the teeth in her throat did not allow her to come out.

Dinosaur with smaller handles than T. rex

If someone mentions a "dinosaur with tiny useless arms," you immediately think of T. rex, although this dinosaur had very strong and muscular forelimbs that allowed it to hold on to prey while fighting. But the carnotaurus had really tiny hands. This genus of large theropods lived in South Africa during the Late Cretaceous period and possessed truly insignificant legs.

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Carnotaurus's arms are easy to overlook against the backdrop of a huge pair of horns on its head. Its pens were so small that some paleontologists have written them off as a rudiment. The forearms were quite strong, but they were one quarter long of the already small humerus. The four-fingered hands were strikingly small.

Paleontologists have no idea why the handles of the Carnotaurus were like this. They can trace the progressive reduction of the forelimbs in the ancestors of the Carnotaurus, but have no idea why evolution chose this trend.

Snake with four legs

The German Museum in Solnhofen contains a petrified snake from the Krato Formation in northwestern Brazil, which is simply labeled as an "unknown fossil." One day, David Martill, an expert on the Krato formation, visited a museum, saw a snake and realized that the fossil must be 20 million years older than any known fossilized snake. He called her "the ancestor of all snakes."

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This fossil also had an amazing feature: four limbs. Previously, snakes with two limbs have already been described, but with four - no. Called Tetrapodophis amplectus, this snake lived 120 million years ago and probably used its limbs to grab onto things rather than move around.

T. amplectus is believed to have been a transitional species from early dinosaurs to modern snakes. Curiously, the bones at the end of her legs were rather long, more characteristic of tree-climbing animals.

Diplodocus tail breaks the sound barrier

It is well known that sauropods like Diplodocus can defend themselves with their whip-tails. In terms of proportion, their tails were like bull whips. But what is remarkable, the tips of these "whip-tails" could overcome the sound barrier.

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Computer simulations of the tails of the Diplodocus and Apatosaurus showed that wiggling from side to side at an angle of nine degrees was enough to accelerate the tip of the tail to 1200 kilometers per hour. As a result of these movements, a noise was born that sounded more like the roar of a cannon than the whistle of a whip. These tails had a horizontal range of motion of 30 degrees.

Paleontologists believe the tail crackle may have been used for communication or in competition among males. Some of the petrified tails were severely deformed, possibly due to excessive cracking.

Bird with clubs on its wings

The hermit dodo (aka Pezophaps solitaria) was a goose-sized bird that could not fly, related to the dodo. He lived on Rodriguez Island in the Indian Ocean. Its wing bones had one surprising feature: round, dense cartilage, which was called the "musket ball."

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These musket balls were used as weapons. For living hermit dodos, these balls were covered with dense skin, which allowed them to hit the enemy with these balls. The birds had strong, muscular wings that helped to swing these musket balls and break bones of rivals. The adult males had the largest balls.

It is believed that these birds were extremely aggressive. No one else had such maces. Hermit dodos became extinct with the colonization of the island by Europeans, long before enthusiasts had the opportunity to stage cockfights with them.

Horned gopher

Ceratogaulus was a genus of prehistoric ground squirrel that lived in North America from 5 to 16 million years ago. It was 30 centimeters long and horned. So far, this is the only known species of horned rodents.

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The function of these horns has been discussed for a long time. Ceratogaulus evolved from rodents that used their heads for digging, but their horns were not placed at the best angle for such tasks. The use of horns for fights between males is excluded, since both sexes had horns. Perhaps horned gophers had poor eyesight, so as a distinctive feature these horns do not look either.

The most likely explanation is that these horns were used for defense. They were sturdy and well positioned to protect the eyes and neck. Predators thrusting themselves into the Ceratogaulus burrow met with horns and were repulsed. Eh, it's a pity that they died out, I would have started one.

ILYA KHEL