It’s Trilobite Tuesday! Meet Heliopeltis, one of Morocco’s strangest Devonian trilobites. This 400-million-year-old marine arthropod had a small body, large eyes, and long spines. Scientists think its unusual physique indicates that this species floated on gentle ocean currents.
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Happy Equirria omnes! 🐴 this was a Roman chariot racing festival honoring the god Mars held every Feb 27 and March 14 🐎
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DYK…
megaladon had a cosmopolitan distribution; its fossils have been excavated from many parts of the world, including europe, africa, the americas, and australia.
megaladon or megatooth shark, which lived nearly worldwide roughly 15-3.6 million years ago and reached at least 50 feet (15 meters) in length, gave birth to babies larger than most adult humans. (6 foot)
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Here’s a weird throwback for ya- it’s not a squid, it’s an ammonite. Ammonites were around right up until when the big dinosaurs went extinct.
Nipponites look like freaky meatballs, but scientists (using a *lot* of math) realized it’s a predictable meatball. When you first look at it, you might think "Um what the shit?" but apparently there is some kind of order in there. Just don't ask me to explain it to ya.
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I’m really in the anomalocaris woes
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Meet the Anomalocaris, this "Abnormal Shrimp" 🦐 lives up to its name! Read 📜 on this post to discover how paleontologists 🔍 solved this jigsaw puzzle 🧩 turning it into a prehistoric portrait painted in fossils.
Image Credits:
Anomalocaris - Critter squad
Anomalocaris fossil - Aria etal, Wikimedia commons
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Dunkleosteus is one of my favorite extinct fishies, i love their big mouths and wanted to make it look like it was smiling :D
Included the shaded and unshaded versions
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This is true of most Egyptian relief work with animals. If you don't believe me, have a look at Hatshepsut's Punt reliefs and the fish.
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Prehistoric Lion Skull from Crayford, Bexley, 245,000 to 186,000BCE, The Museum of London
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Lions painted in the Chauvet Cave,
ca. 30,000 BC.
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It’s a bird! It’s a plane! It’s… a dinosaur? Nope to all of the above. This Fossil Friday, let’s talk about pterosaurs—the first animals with bones to evolve powered flight. Though they were related to dinosaurs, pterosaurs evolved on a separate branch of the reptile family tree. They ruled the skies for more than 150 million years, evolving into dozens of different species. Some were as small as a paper airplane while others, like Pteranodon pictured here in the Museum's Hall of Late Dinosaurs circa 1940-1960, had a wingspan of more than 20 ft (6 m).
Along with other large pterosaurs, Pteranodon longiceps was first discovered in western Kansas, near a chalk formation called Monument Rocks. Today the region is dry, but at the time this species lived, about 85 million years ago, central North America was covered by a seaway. This large pterosaur likely spent its days flying over the sea. Unlike early species of pterosaurs, Pteranodon and many other Cretaceous-era species didn’t have any teeth. In fact, its genus name means “winged and toothless,” while the second name, longiceps, means “long-headed.”
Today, you can find Pteranodon in the Hall of Vertebrate Origins. We're open daily from 10 am-5:30 pm! Plan your visit.
Photo: Image no. ptc-217 © AMNH Library
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Pre-Historic Waters: The Tully Monster
These strange but wonderful creatures were up to a foot long and lived about 300 million years ago in the at the time shallow tropical waters of Illinois.
These strange, soft bodied creatures were discovered in the mid-60s by paleontologist Eugene Richardson and are believed by some scientists to be similar to modern-day lampreys.
(Let me know if you folks are interested in pre historic water life too! I'd love to talk about them more.)
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Thought of this meme with Hallucigenia, an ancient cambrian-era animal. Now that I think about it, it should probably have more spikes :P
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port Jackson sharks?
DYK…
port jackson sharks are considered to be harmless, however, if provoked they could pose a threat.
port jackson sharks are a nocturnal, bottom dwelling 'bullhead' shark endemic to the Great Southern Reef. these sharks grow up to 1.65m and can live for more than 30 years. they usually live at depths of less than 100 metres but have been known to go as deep as 275 metres.
port jackson sharks are not an endangered species and is not used as a common food supply. it is, however, useful when scientists are hoping to study bottom-dwelling sharks and can be vulnerable to being caught as bycatch.
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The Louvre calls this a Vegetable Monster and you know what? Fair.
[ID: A small panel of a fresco, framed in red. The background of the fresco is plain cream-white; the only figure painted into the plaster is a willowy creature with a goatlike head, deep chest, spindly front legs, and body tapering to a vinelike shape in the back. Instead of rear legs, two curving vines prop up the back half of its body. It looks like an ivy plant trying to be an ungulate.]
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