Come home with this in your pail, and you’ll be famous!
Some fossils look so weird as to be not of this earth. The ancient amphibian Diplocaulus, with its boomerang-shaped head, is one of them.
Why did Diplocaulus have such a funny-shaped head? To discourage predators from swallowing him head-first? We really can’t know unless we find some live ones somewhere and observe how they live. But that’s always hard to do unless you’re in a movie.
This little character doesn’t get much ink nowadays, having been upstaged by his more spectacular contemporaries. But back when I was first getting hooked on prehistoric critters as a boy, “Seymouria” was in all the books.
Not everything that comes from Texas is big. Seymouria was only two feet long or so. Its fossils have also been found in Europe. The odd thing about Seymouria was that he seems to have been an amphibian that was able to prosper in a dry climate because some of his features were more like a reptile’s than an amphibian’s. No fossils of its young have been found. I discount reports that Seymouria tadpoles resembled beautiful women.
The Creator is very creative. Seymouria may not look like much, but it was really a very innovative design.
I wonder if it’ll turn up in Obann. It might make a nice pet for somebody.
P.S.–I couldn’t post this as a “Memory Lane” piece. Someone might think I’d seen a Seymouria.
Hi, Mr. Nature here, with some more of God’s stuff that pushes our imaginations to the limit.
This ancient amphibian is Diplocaulus, with its unforgettable boomerang-shaped head. It has left behind abundant fossils, so we have a pretty good idea of its life cycle, its diet, the way it moved, etc. This is one of those prehistoric animals that you only have to meet once, for it to stick in your mind.
Feel free to ignore the narrator in this video. He’s a little bit too certain about things.
There is a famous picture of a Diplocaulus in a bucket, as if the animal had been caught by a fisherman. There is no reason to believe the photo is anything but a fake. Very nicely done, though!
So there probably are no more Diplocauluses for us to see in the flesh, and we’ll have to make do with fossils for the time being… Until the Lord regenerates His whole creation. And won’t that be something!