Tag: prehistoric animals

Sail-Backs Galore

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The Golden Treasury of Natural History – Looky

Dimetrodons in The Golden Treasury of Natural History

Once upon a time there were all these weird large reptiles with sails on their backs. Dimetrodon is the best known, but there are several kinds of reptiles, unrelated, that carried “sails” on their backs.

But there was also this.

Platyhystrix

Platyhystrix wasn’t even a reptile, but an amphibian.

And the motif crops up again, in a big, big way!

396 Spinosaurus Stock Photos, High-Res Pictures, and Images ...

Spinosaurus was one of the largest predatory dinosaurs. Dig the sail! And the contemporary vegetarian dinosaur Ouranosaurus, also carried a nice high sail.

Why does this crazy feature crop up in so many unrelated prehistoric animals? Scientists don’t agree as to what the sail’s purpose might have been. The only use they’ve ruled out is… well, sailing. Heck, it might’ve had a dozen uses.

I can’t help but think God had a use for it. I don’t see it popping again and again into the fossil record as a random response to the environment.

And then there was the head of Diplocaulus, shaped very like a boomerang…

Diplocaulus is an extinct lepospondyl from the Paleozoic Era. Poster Print by Nobumichi Tamura/Stocktrek Images (32 x 24

 

Did Climbit Change Kill Off Giant Apes?

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Couldn’t they get the little apes, like the one in the picture, to pick their fruit for them?

Let’s educate ourselves by watching TV news!

NBC News has reported on Chinese research that claims that the world’s giant apes, ten feet tall, went extinct because of Climate Change that had a fatal result: they “couldn’t reach their favorite fruits” (https://www.thegatewaypundit.com/2024/01/you-cant-make-this-up-nbc-news-claims/). Scientists know this creature as Gigantopithecus and say it went extinct some 300,000 years ago–again, due to Climate Change.

Whoa! Say what?? You mean cars, gas stoves, air conditioning, and toilet paper didn’t cause that Climbit Change disaster? Poor Gigantopithecus! If only they’d been smart enough to invent ladders!

Thousands and thousands of prehistoric species had to live with innumerable Climbit Change episodes, and many thousands of species, and whole groups of animals (like dinosaurs) have gone extinct without being pushed over the edge by us. Why, it’s enough to tempt you into believing climates change all the time, all throughout Earth’s history. And just maybe we can’t control it, no matter how much power is handed over to stupid and tyrannical governments.

(“But it must be true, I saw it on TV!”)

‘The Very Strange “Shovel-Tusked” Elephant’ (2018)

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Image result for platybelodon

Behold the Platybelodon, aka “the shovel-tusked elephant.” It wasn’t quite as large as a modern elephant, but still too hefty for your living room–although living rooms had not yet been invented, so that’s no problem. And those elongated jaws helped this animal to catch its food–gnats and fruit flies–on the wing.

The Very Strange ‘Shovel-Tusked’ Elephant

[Stop! Get this guy outta here, he’s crazy.]

Sorry about that–I needed a laugh.

Anyway, here’s a very cool prehistoric animal that doesn’t get much press; but you can find out all about it if you click the link above.

Really Scary Predators! Land Crocodiles

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The dinosaurs were long gone, it was the Age of Mammals… but these huge reptilian predators didn’t know that.

Mr. Nature here, with a bunch of mostly obscure prehistoric predators related to today’s alligators and crocodiles. The video will hit you with enough scientific names to have you talking to yourself, but at least it’s full of cool pictures. And all you need to know, really, is that “suchus”–which is part of most of those names–means “crocodile.”

I wonder when these monsters will turn up in Lintum Forest!

What I see here is not “evolution,” but rather God’s infinite creative power. We don’t know very much about Dentaneosuchus, et al,  but we do have some fossil evidence–enough to convince us that this would have been a very good animal to avoid. Their remains have been found in Europe, Africa, and South America.

Why aren’t they still here? The LORD has not given us an explanation. He has the entire universe at His disposal, So who knows, there might be some of these in places where we’ll never go.

Meanwhile, we can stand in awe of God’s handiwork.

Dino… Blood… Found?

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This 23-minute video is chock-full of numbing technical language–it’s here if you want it–but let me boil it down for you.

At stake here is a claim that actual dinosaur blood cells have been found. Scientists are divided between “Oh, that has to be wrong!” and “Um, er, excuse me, the phone is ringing!”

The problem is, we have some reputable scientists making this claim; and although just laughing them off or even punishing them has worked well in the past, it doesn’t work anymore.

Dreadnoughtus , named after a historic battleship, was a super-big dinosaur that lived in Argentina. What if we really had intact blood cells? Could we use it to grow a Dreadnoughtus, a la Jurassic Park? A lot of scientists are retreating to the sidelines until such time, they say, as technology catches up to our needs.

Can blood–or collagen, or other soft tissue–really survive for millions and millions of years, in the bones of long-vanished animals? Or is there something deeply wrong with that question? If it can’t, and yet there it is, maybe there’s something wrong with the imagined time scale.

God does like to challenge our minds, doesn’t He?

Mr. Nature: Elasmosaurus

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Jambo! Mr. Nature here; and today’s safari takes us to the inland sea of what is now Kansas–and Elasmosaurus, one of God’s creations that has puzzled science for over 100 years.

This was a plesiosaur, a marine reptile, with an insanely long neck. There were many species of plesiosaurs, all following basically the same body pattern… which can be described as a snake with the body of a sea turtle. Many artists have depicted the Elasmosaurus’ neck performing wild twists and turns and arabesques, but the actual skeleton doesn’t support that. The neck was probably much less flexible than that.

One of America’s two greatest 19th-century paleontologists, Edward Cope, reconstructed Elasmosaurus with the head attached to the tail. Legend has it that the other greatest paleontologist, Othniel Marsh, publicly shamed Cope by pointing out his error (“Ha, ha, you did it backwards!”)–after which the two scientists became mortal enemies locked in a fierce competition which has come to be called “the Bone Wars.”

We still don’t know how this animal reproduced itself or how it used its preposterous neck. (Not as crazy as the neck of Tanystropheus, but it seems that where prehistoric animals are concerned, anything goes.) Well, it must have worked efficiently, or there would have been no Elasmosaurs.

I really love these weird creatures, even if I can’t explain how they managed their everyday lives.

This Has Nothing to Do With Anything, Really

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I’ve wanted to post this little video for a long time, and it’s finally available–a brief visit with extinct mammals called Chalicotheres–or “knuckle bears,” if you’re already acquainted with them via Bell Mountain.

Is it a kind of horse? A gorilla? A grounded tree sloth? Or some weird combination of the three? Their fossils have been found in North America, Africa, Europe, and Asia.

Anyway, I thought this might provide a welcome break from nooze. God’s creative work knows no bounds. Let’s appreciate it!

‘Fun Stuff God Has Done: The Diplocaulus’ (2017)

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I recently heard about this anphibian named Diplocaulus and I think it's pretty cool. Btw, sorry for the bad quality. : r/badassanimals

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.

Fun Stuff God Has Done: the Diplocaulus

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.

 

Mr. Nature: The Giant Dragonfly

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Meganeura, a hawk-sized relative of modern dragonflies that lived during the Carboniferous : r/Naturewasmetal

Jambo, Mr. Nature here–with a dragonfly that has a two-foot wingspan. Sometimes a little more.

Meganeura is prehistoric, so don’t worry about one flying into your car while you’re driving on the highway. Once upon a time, some insects grew to spectacular size (although not to the degree celebrated in assorted 1950s monster movies). Scientists think it was possible for them to grow so large because there was more oxygen in the air then than there is today. Mixing the air is God’s prerogative.

Dragonflies, totally harmless to humans, eat mosquitoes. As far as I’m concerned, we can never have too many dragonflies.

‘Lost! 200-Foot-Long Dinosaur’ (2019)

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See the source image

If you can imagine these, you can imagine anything.

Imagine a land animal as long as two basketball courts laid end to end. Take your time: you’ll have to stretch your imagination pretty far.

Now imagine losing that animal!

Lost! 200-foot-long Dinosaur

Really! How do you misplace a 9-foot-long dinosaur backbone? It’s this bone that allows scientists to estimate the length of the living creature as somewhere around 200 feet. I wonder how many of these beasts you could herd onto Guam before you made the island capsize.

But the bone has been mislaid! All we have are drawings and measurements made of it back in the 1870s. Just not the same as the real thing!

God does like to challenge our imaginations, doesn’t He?