Paleontology

 This really shows how marsupials evolved to fill ecological niches occupied elsewhere by placental mammals. In the prehistoric past there were many more--huge lumbering diprotodonts, the marsupial "tapir" palorachestes, the panda-like  homaldotherium from the bamboo-forested highlands, and of course, the feline imitation thylacoleo , the size of a jaguar and capable of taking down the giant ten-foot kangaroo procoptodon. More bizarre were the carnivorous roos, elketadia and propliopus, the giant monitor lizard megalania, the size of a Kodiak and weighing more then a rhino, and the ankylosaur-like turtle meiolania . On the subject of thylacoleo , though, the most surprising think about it was it was relatively unrelated to the other marsupial carnivores, such as the thylacine and Tasmanian devil. Those, the quolls and the dunnarts, all belong to the dasyurid or thylacinid families. Those are both share kin with with the opossums and extinct borhyenids of the Americas. But t

  When I first read about quetzalcoatlus as a child in the seventies, I was amazed. I'd always thought that pteranodon was the largest pterosaur that ever lived. That's what all the books said. But this creature, discovered in the Big Bedn region of south Texas, was twice that huge!. Pteranodon was 25 feet wingspread, but this one was 50 feet. Twice the record! Actually, over time, the size of quetzalcoatlus was scaled down to about 35 feet, only ten feet larger. But who knows, especially large specimens could have achieved 50. And it was still the size of a small airplane.            When first uncovered the bones were believed to belong to a large dinosaur. But their hollowness suggested a super-pterosaur instead! Back then, it had not been officially named, and only went by the name "Texas Pterosaur." And the skull had not been yet uncovered. But it had a long neck, and was believed to be a giant scavenger. It turns out, this was correct, but there was speculation

  This is a pic I found online a long time ago, and I used on my post about marsupial carnivores in South America. I don't know if even if it exists anywhere online other than that these days. It is obviously a painting by paleoartist Mark Hallett. He is one of my favorite paleoartists, but like Matternes, much of his work is not available. It shows a thrylacosmilus, the marsupial version of a saber-tooth cat, leaping on the back of a toxodont (I don't recognize the species). it also appears to show some out of place horses in the background. Plus, there's a rabbit in the foreground, neither of which I think would be present in S. America during this time. Certainly not horses! They would only have arrived after the Panama landbridge connected the two continents. The picture is slightly out of focus, so I may not have identified those animals correctly, however. Thoatherium was a horse-like creature that evolved parallel to them, preyed on by the marsupials and terror bir

  Above is a pic and article on T-rex from a favorite book when I was a child. I was going to make a blog post on this, but I got lazy Correction, I got over being lazy). . Still, this is how Tyrannosaurus was seen back then, and the thing is, it was really much more terrifying, as it was fast and ferocious. The book says it "waddled", and we now know that T-rex did not waddle. I have another book that says daspletosaurus may have "waddled" slowly like a duck". How could that have been, since it was built totally different--for relative speed, in fact? John Ostrom, who famously discovered deinonychus, and first proposed the idea that some dinosaurs were warm-blooded (the whole notion of warm-bloodedness was taking hold at the time, but still most books remained out of date), compared t-rex to a elephant in size and metabolism. This was in an issue of American Scientist, where he disagreed with Robert Bakker's proposal that T-Re could run as fast as a raceh

  NOTE: This is a post that I made years ago, but placed them in Spirituality Issues, basically my blog on religion. I'm moving it here, where I believe it belongs.  The evolution of marsupial predators in Australia and South America have been the center of controversy regarding their alleged “inferiority” to eutherian, or placental mammals. This latter group includes all other mammal species, including humans. Marsupial mammals are considered to be the more primitive group. They became isolated in the Southern reaches of Gondwana at the end of the Cretaceous. Gondwana included South America, Antarctica, and Australia, and subsequently split up into those three landmasses supposedly before placental predators had penetrated this far south. While little is known about the fauna of Antarctica for obvious regions, both predators and prey in Australia were represented by marsupials, while in South America the herbivores were represented by primitive placental groups, while their predat

The above pic is a thought-provoking one. The most awesome and terrifying creature our world has ever known...is the small one staring out in dazed awe, hands pressed up against the glass, his gift-store megalodon plush lying to the side. His species holds the potential to annihilate all life on earth, and has already altered the planet drastically--and now holds the second most terrifying creature of earth's history a helpless captive. Poor megalodon doesn't stand a chance.  This is the paperback edition of Hell's Aquarium, the one where the monster shark is found to have survived along with other monstrous sea creatures.   Okay, this is likely enough on the Animal Ghosts book, besides encouraging readers to seek it out.  But this was the first I'd ever heard of the great megalodon shark. And like many people today, it seems, the book speculates a few might be still roaming the seas even today.  This was long before the monster became infamous in pop-culture. Not to

Just a couple of the wondrous pics to be found in this gem of a book.   Here are animal couple of shorts from the book Animal Ghosts  (don't know why it was called that), that I discovered back in elementary school. One shows how birds eventually outcompeted pterosaurs as they grew more advanced. The other proposes hat living pterodactyls might survive in Africa. The local name for the alleged pterosaur is kongomatu"".   Evidence of a lost land somewhere in Africa? Well, I recently posted an article where a flying pterosaur-like beast was assumed to have flown in from Pal-ul-don! 

Back in the third grade, I discovered, during inside recess, a slim paperback book called Animal Ghosts, published by the Walt Disney company. It contained a series of very brief, very fascinating pieces about animals, the vast majority of them prehistoric.  Though I didn't know it at the time, the above "mystery monster" shown above killing a moose was the famed North American short-faced bear. I just assumed it must be the cavebear whose scientific I already knew was actually  Ursus Spleleaus . Looking back, though, I realized what the creature above must really have been. It looks more like a short-face after all, and since purchasing the above copy on ebay, I recognize that the name tremarctus (or more properly Arctodu s) does refer to the short-faced bear. The Inopinatus is a legendary Indian creature, though. Could the  arctodus, or short-face, have survived the Plesticene, or somehow inspired the legend? We probably won't know, unless a living specimen turns

 Growing up, I had a profound interest in thylacines. Everyone reading this should know already what they are. They are also known as Tasmanian tigers and Tasmanian wolves, and in decades past were called also hyena-opossums, Tasmanian dingos and Zebra-wolves among others.  The above beautiful painting is from my copy of Rare and Beautiful Animals , a 70s book of then-endangered species, with a few extinct ones like the aurochs and bleubok thrown in (the thylacine was still in the endangered realm). The painting depicts a thylacine with a freshly killed pademelon. It was one of my favorite books, that I got for Christmas in the third grade. I remember asking for it at a mall, and my dad coming back with the book hidden inside his coat! I supposed it had sold out, and it such a surprise to find it under the tree!  It was THIS pic that was my favorite though, and you can still see the mustard stains that got on the page, when I was eating sardine-and-mustard sandwiches, which went so wel

 Years ago, I happened online somewhere of a painting, unmistakably the work of Jay Matternes, of a thylacine in pursuit of a wallaby.  I was never able to find it again. There is so much of Matternes art that appeared in books over the years, especially by National Geographic it seems, that is not readily available. Even the recent paleoart book Lost Worlds the Art of Jay Matternes , mostly focused a few of his most famous murals.  The other week I went searching for some NG books on australia. I found that this one featured some of Matternes' art, so I bought it, wondering if just possibly it might contain the above painting.  There are only two other Matternes wildlife pics, one of a platapus, and the other of a dibbler. But lo and behold! There was the pic I'd been long searching for. And here it is for all to see. 

  When I was around 13 years old, my dad used to take me every three months to my doctor in Indianopolis who a specialists for a disorder I had.  I'd have my blood test, then return after a few hours time to get the results and meet with the doctor. During that time, my dad took me to the mall, the zoo, the museum, or wherever I wanted to go.  That time, at the mall, (and this was before I discovered the local comic book store, Comic Carnival, and Nostalgia Emporium, where I found the first Callisto book by Lin Carter) the B. Dalton Book seller had the entire series of Bernard Grzimek's  Encyclopedia of Wildlife  series on sale. Grzimek was a famous zoologist its who authored the book Four-Legged Australians. There was a single chapter in that book devoted entirely to the destruction of the thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger where he made the prediction, correctly I fear, that though a few thylacines might still survive, they were totally unadapted to the forests where they'd b

 UPDATED Does anyone remember the book Our Continent, published by the National Geographic Society, back in the seventies. As a young child, I saw it advertised, and actually found a copy at local library! It was far too often checked out, though. My fifth grade teach mentioned he had a copy of this, among other valuable books, at home. But this I couldn't get, so I begged my dad to order it for me. And he did.  Its a great book on the natural history of the North American continent, and continent featuring art by Czek paleoartist Zdenke Burian, including the one with a tryannosaurus after two trachodons. It also featured two panoramic paintings of prehistoric mammals, one in the Eocene and other in the Miocence by Jay Matternes. It was the first time I encountered those gorgeous works, and they left me stunned.  I'd seen the Burian artwork in his Life Through the Ages book, also at the local library, which I checked out many times. It was in Our Continent, however, that I fir