Paleo Curiosities
@21Fede_
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I talk about paleontology and Zoology | Sometimes I write articles for PaleoNerdIT | Enjoyer of Insular Fauna and Speculative Evolution
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Joined July 2021
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It's always cool to see recently extinct animals and living ones in the same illustration. It really gives a sad feeling that you've just missed something unique, and unfortunately, there won't be a second chance to see it ever again
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New favorite fish unlocked! This is Beryx decadactylus, commonly known as Alfonsino. It looks so strange but at the same time so normal, I love it. This deep sea species has a nearly worldwide distribution and can also get fairly large, up to 1 meter.
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But we already have Oviraptor chicken
After 13 years Dinochicken Project has reached a threshold. We know how to initiate teeth, alter skull shape, transform wingtip to a 3 fingered hand, and produce a bony tail. Next and final step will likely have to be on an island, with a generous, intrepid donor!!
#dinochicken
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I think the Fat catfish (Rhizosomichthys totae) achieved the ultimate body plan. Sadly this little guy is probably extinct. It only lived in Lake Tota (Colombia), and its population was decimated by invasive rainbow trouts introduced by humans. We really can't have nice things
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Oh so you like non avian dinosaurs? Name one that doesn't end with:
saurus
raptor
ceratops
pteryx
hadros
venator
spondylus
titan
gnathus
saura
lestes
don
dromeus
ornis
nyx
phus
nychus
nykus
long,
pelta
cephale
cephalus
tholus
mimus
cursor
cheirus
lambia
rhinus
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The fact that a random guy from TikTok managed to capture footage of a very obscure species engaging in a behavior never filmed before is crazy!
Some amazing footage of a Northern Bottlenose Whale off Greenland! I've never heard of this sort of opportunistic scavenging behaviour documented from any Beaked Whales before, and CERTAINLY never seen footage of it!
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I love how the otter civet (Cynogale bennettii) looks like is permanently saying :3
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Perucetus after the new paper.
We all knew this was coming.
#coproliteposting
#paleomeme
#paleomemes
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Don't you hate when your Megistotherium doesn't want to wake up?
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Macrauchenia surely has one of the weirdest skull I've ever seen. It looks so made up, like someone took a cetacean-like skull and then attached the teeth of some herbivore to it.
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I'll always like this representation of what could've happend in a hypothetical encounter between Jeremy and the king of River Monsters, Rhizodus. This illustration was made by @/FilikoTo (he's also on DeviantArt)
OMG I LOVED THIS SPECIAL!!!
Not just was it the best paleo crossover since Nigel Marven but the actual prehistoric fish featured were surprisingly accurate (even for modern standards)!
Rhizodus was my favorite in this!
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Inostrancevia and Scutosaurus
Screw ships. Give me two characters that just fucking hate each other.
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I just found out that sometimes the tusks of hippos can grow more than usual and out of control making them even more intimidating than they already are.
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Nothing will ever beat these sauropods by John Conway for me
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So I recently found out that there's a Marvel comic where the Fantastic Four end up in a universe with dinosaurs instead of people, and they engage in a brief battle with the Dino Avengers
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The northern cassowary (Casuarius unappendiculatus) is without a doubt the most striking species of the genus. Look at those beautiful vibrant colors!
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"They called me a madman"
- Beverly Halstead, 1975
Here, again, my idea for Thyreosaurus. I had a lot of fun speculating about the appearance of this one. It has some crazy osteoderms that aren't like anything we see in stegosaur otherwise.
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Garganornis would be perfect for this job
Since Geese unironically make for great guard animals due to naturally being territorial and difficult to bribe unlike dogs
Imagine a Guard Gastornis😭(its canon in the HE, they even use the birds as forest steeds)
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POV: your free trial of life in Hell Creek is about to end
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Friendly reminder that New Zealand had not one, not two, but nine species of Moa! Belonging to six genera divided in two families, they both inhabited the North and South Island and varied a lot in size, geographical range, diet and ecological niche. What's your favorite species?
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Spheniscus megaramphus is basically the answer to the question "What if Kelenken, but Penguin?"
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The southern cassowary (Casuarius casuarius) always gets all the attention but remember there are two other lesser known and equally interesting species: the northern cassowary (C. unappendiculatus) and the dwarf cassowary (C. bennetti), both living in New Guinea.
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We need more paleoart of non-sauropod Sauropodomorphs and early sauropods together. We know they coexisted for a while in some places during the Early (maybe even Middle) Jurassic. Seeing them interacting in the same environment would've been unusual but also very interesting.
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Just a reminder that no change of species has ever been observed…
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This old chimp with grey fur looks so badass! It has those "elder warrior who fought and won many battles" vibes. His name is Tumbo and He's from the Ngamba Island Chimpanzee Sanctuary
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Friendly reminder that even if entelodonts are nicknamed hell pigs even if they are more related to hippos, there used to be a real hell pig which roamed Africa during the Miocene. Megalochoerus humungous, the largest suid to ever live.
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I may be wrong but I think that Tartuosteus is the largest known vertebrate... Without jaws!
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Isn't It amazing that the only other ceratopsid known from Asia has an almost complete skull with such unique and well preserved horn ornamentation?
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Gotta love paleoart of Deinosuchus brutally attacking tyrannosaurs
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Just like when giant tortoises and dwarf hippos used to live in Madagascar during the Pleistocene and the Holocene.
Rangers discovered a one-year-old hippo, whom they have named Owen, alone and dehydrated near Kenya's Indian Ocean coast after he became separated from his herd in 2004.
They took him to a wildlife sanctuary in Mombasa, where he soon found a male tortoise with the same dark grey
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Still waiting for an official description of this absolute monster of a cynodont from the Middle Triassic Omingonde formation of Namibia. It's only known by a skull of about 60 cm and was only presented in an abstract from the 2015 SVP meeting.
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Still waiting for an official description of the "giant" Bolosaurid from the Tambach Formation mentioned in an abstract of the 2018 SVP. The fact that a facultative biped was the largest animal of its environment during the Early Permian is so cool and bizarre to think about.
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The higher percentage of Oxygen in the Carboniferous wasn't the main or even one of the causes that made some arthropods grow giant.
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Anodontosaurus wanted to be very sure it could absolutely delete from existence any opponent or predator who had the gut to face it.
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I love how in the Middle Jurassic theropod dinosaurs were the apex predators of their ecosystem and then there's the Sakaraha Formation in Madagascar where the absolute overlord was still an enormous terrestrial crocodylomorph named Razanandrongobe sakalavae.
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Alright what was going on with the Dorling Kindersley's Pteranodon and its comically large feet???
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"Coelacanths are living fossils since they barely changed through time".
Meanwhile Coelacanths through time:
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It was at this moment that Leptictidium knew... He f**ked up
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Friendly reminder that in Australia during the Pleistocene, giant kangaroos were not only present on land, but also on the trees! For example, this is Bohra illuminata, one of the biggest and best known species.
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Do you remember the Tyrannosaurs app? It was made to promote an exhibition about their evolution and it was kinda simple, but I remember having much fun the times I played it back in the day.
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Thinking about Seriemas and how cool they are, literal miniature terror birds. The most famous is of course the Red legged Seriema (Cariama cristata) but there's also a second lesser known species, the Black legged Seriema (Chunga burmeisteri).
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Imagine one person doing a tremendously far better work than a Netflix documentary, that's impossib- oh wait
Pequeno spoiler animado do Triceratops do
@LucasMateus707
para o documentário "A vida do Triceratops" em dezembro no canal. Só para vocês terem uma noção melhor de como ele está ;)
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Beibeilong is a very interesting and underrated dinosaur. Its name means "baby dragon" and even if it's based only on a clutch of giant eggs with even a preserved embryo, we know that when fully grown, it could've likely reach a similar size to that of Gigantoraptor.
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I checked the preview of
#AttenboroughAndTheGiantSeaMonster
on the BBC website and look who's there...
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@simonthesly74
I partially blame some famous content creators and the way they explained these behaviors to the big public
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#Croctober
Revueltosaurus callenderi was a bizarre Late Triassic herbivorous pseudosuchian from the 🇺🇲. It had a unique bony club at the end of its tail, reminiscent but different from those of the Ankylosaurids. However, nothing can stop me from calling it the Ankylocroc.
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Cool, I didn't know about this cryptid. It's very interesting cause fossils of a giant 2.5 meters long pangolin named Manis paleojavanica have been uncovered in Java and Malaysia, and It's believed it went extinct between 30k and 40k years ago.
The veo is a large cryptid from the island of Rinda in Indonesia. Described as 10 feet (3m) in length, its most notable feature is large scales running down its back. Due to this some have theorized that the cryptid is a large pangolin
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The smallest living bird is the 5 to 6 cm long Bee hummingbird (Mellisuga helenae), but what about the smallest extinct one? That title goes to Cratoavis cearensis, an Enantiornithes which lived in the Early Cretaceous uncovered from the Crato Formation of what's now Brazil.
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POV: A Gigantopithecus asked you to bring him the red flower but you don't know how to make it.
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Imagine being the last living member of a once diverse family which also included the largest rodent to ever live. That's how the Pacarana feels
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If you're familiar with the usual famous 3/4 species of large sized squids, here's a reminder that there are way more species than you might think. And who knows, maybe there are even others who are just waiting to be discovered, lurking in the depths of our oceans.
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In this
#FossilFriday
we take a look at Lessiniabatis aenigmatica, one of the many cool rays from the Eocene Bolca Lagerstätte of Italy. Known from 3 specimens, It was around 60 cm long and it had a truly unique feature among rays: an incredibly short tail with no stinger.
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On a serious note about Decuriasuchus, It's interesting to remember that is known by nine specimens which seem to have died all together, indicating that this species may have been gregarious or even had a somewhat social behavior
Me: I've had a rough day, I don't want to talk about it
Decuriasuchus skeletal: please do, you know you can tell me everything
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So many people saying that this synapsid from the Life on Our Planet trailer is a gorgonopsid. Honestly I'm pretty sure it's a therocephalian, likely Euchambersia, or a close relative like Moschorhinus.
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So we have a deer with a long horse-like tail and a wide short skull which could indicate a semi aquatic lifestyle and was likely portrayed in some cave paintings. How is this thing not more famous?!?!
Megaceroides algericus was a bizarre Late Pleistocene/Early Holocene megacerine known from only a few specimens in North Africa. Along with a population of Red Deer, these were the only cervids to have successfully invaded Africa.
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Have you ever thought what other animals live with the Rhinogrades on those islands? Sometimes they're briefly mentioned in the book, and one very cool example is the Fritsch's megaphone bird, a flightless petrel with modified neck and back feathers used to amplify its calls
The Rhinogrades are mine!!! I finally managed to find a copy of The Snouters for a decent price and in very good conditions! I have to say it's even smaller than I thought, but this surely doesn't make it any less awesome
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It's always a blast when I remember how weird Protuberum is. Aside from being a member of Traversodontidae, a family of herbivorous cynodonts, it also had its ribs and ilia full of bumpy protuberances, something truly unique among tetrapods. What was going on with this guy?!
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This is the perfect excuse to mention how many interesting and unique animals have become extinct on these islands due to our impact. Despite the damage, there are still many cool endemic species that inhabit them and they need to be preserved so they won't meet the same fate.
This area feels like such a missed opportunity. There should be more stuff here
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What do you mean there's a genus of plants called Aa!?
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Random reminder that Tethyshadros insularis is the first Italian dinosaur to have ever appeared in a high budget documentary, and I couldn't be happier for that.
#PrehistoricPlanet
#PrehistoricPlanet2
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During my childhood I was interested in prehistoric marine life even a bit more than dinosaurs and other extinct animals, and when it comes to the paleoart of these animals, some of my favorite illustrations are the works made by Dan Varner
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Aside from the four species of Babirusa as a whole, my favorite suids are the giant forest hog (Hylochoerus meinertzhageni) and the pygmy hog (Porcula silvania), which coincidentally are also the largest and smallest members of the Suidae family.
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Although rays are not as diversified as sharks, they still have a surprising amount of variations in their body shape, mostly due to their different sizes and ecological niches.
All the names are in the Alt text.
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Inside a forest of the Early Jurassic covered in ferns, conifers and Benettitales, two Saltriovenator are trying to take down a basal sauropod while a lone crocodylomorph and some pterosaurs scatter away in the background due to all the noise.
🎨 Paleoart by Mattia Yuri Messina
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Austrolimulus is my favorite extinct horseshoe crab. Not only this tiny dude (around 17 cm wide) got tired of the sea and moved to freshwater, but it was also equipped with those very long and cool looking spines. I guess it also wanted to take over the sky!
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I kinda miss the vibes of Megaraptor's paleoart when it was thought to be an absolute humongous dromeosaur
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Bro got caught while evolving! For
#FossilFriday
here's Amphistium paradoxum, a flatfish of about 20 cm from the Eocene Lagerstätte of Bolca, Italy. Instead of having both eyes on one side, one of them was on top of the head, making it an amazing example of transitional fossil!
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It's pretty cool to think that for some time, different types of bears used to roam Africa, such as the Pliocene Panda relative Agriotherium africanum or the Atlas bear, a Brown bear subspecies which went extinct just around the year 1870.
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Megaladapis truly has one of the weirdest skulls of any primate and mammal. This was a giant lemur, yet, at least to me, it looks more like some sort of strange bovid with short fangs.
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The sixgill stingray (Hexatrygon bickelli) is just so goofy and unique as a ray, I love it. A big (up to 1.7 meter long) deep sea species with a long pointy snout used to probe the sea floor, no dermal denticles and of course, a bonus pair of gills.
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Friendly reminder that Psittacosaurus is the non avian dinosaur genus with the most species, and funnily enough, that amazingly preserved specimen labelled as SMF R 4970 does not belong in any of those, being just Psittacosaurus sp.
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Phyllocarida is such an underrated subclass of crustaceans. Not only they evolved during the Ordovician and are still alive today, but back in the Paleozoic there were absolutely gigantic relatives compared to the living ones, making them very cool and bizarre mesopredators.
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Its nostrils make it look like the viral Sacabambaspis model I'm crying 😭
Cetopsis are fundamentally unserious fishes
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When it comes to insular fauna, canids are a rare instance, but when it happens, they surely are very interesting and captivating. Sadly, these four are extinct, but thankfully there are also some living examples
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And then I said "I told you I'm not a miniaturised platypus, I'm literally a mole, but semiaquatic, screw the underground!"
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Until not long ago, the Yangtze River used to have so many amazing unique animals: freshwater cetaceans, giant salamanders, huge fish and strange reptiles. Now, all of them are either extinct or critically endangered due to human activities, truly a sad loss to its biodiversity.
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That's pretty funny. Now, imagine if a mammal had "saurus" in its na-
Oh
Behold Fulgurotherium, the only dinosaur whose name ends in "-therium" (meaning "beast"). It's usually reserved for mammals, but describing dinosaurs as "beasts" isn't wrong (and goes hard).
Art on left by Meig Dickson.
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I like how all the members of the Mephitidae family live in the Americas and then we have two species that are instead native to South East Asia: these are the Sunda stink badger (Mydaus javanensis) and the Palawan stink badger (Mydaus marchei).
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Imagine hearing for the first time the name Infernovenator thinking It's some kind of large menacing theropod and then finding out It's just a silly little goober.
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