The Time of Great Weirdening

The Miocene (~23-5 Ma) was a tremendously eventful period in Earth's history. With non-avian dinosaurs long gone, the Age of Mammals was coming to its climax, with mammalian diversity reaching unprecedented levels which remain unmatched to this day. It seemed as though evolution had let go of the reigns of normality, and species, regardless of class, reached sizes unheard of or filling impossible niches. Each continent, and every sea, had its share of brand new weirdo denizens.

These bizarre new creatures didn't appear out of nowhere. Global cooling was causing a drastic change in the world's ecosystems. The land was becoming drier, the seas becoming cooler and more fertile. The Miocene marked the end of the era of primeval forests and swamps the size of continents, and slowly the post-dinosaurian world was fading into the past. Mammals were reaching the peak of their diversity. Many modern families of birds came into existence. The tremendous boas, crocodiles, and turtles were becoming more and more rare, their lineage surviving in a few sole species in the wetlands of South America.

Just as the puzzling world of the Paleogene was slipping into the past, the modern world was coming into view. Recognizable horses, rhinoceroses, elephants, antelope, whales, and many other families made their debut. The great apes were coming into fruition, and in a few tens of millions of years their descendants would becoming mankind.  However, the variety of species, even of recognizable ones, was far greater than any period of the Cenozoic, and has never been matched. In this post, I hope to highlight for you some of the most fascinating and, of course, the weirdest of the great Miocene menagerie.

Rise of the Planet of the Artiodactyls
With the disappearance of the rainforests in North America, a whole new environment was created. It may come as a surprise that, up until approximately 20Ma, grasses were rare if not completely absent from major environments. Now that large swathes of land were clear of overgrowth, vast prairies and savannahs began to form. It was on these savannahs that herbivorous mammalian diversity began to skyrocket, and artiodactyls, the even-hoofed mammals, had their first moment of glory.

For tens of millions of years, from the end-Cretaceous extinction until the rise of the grasslands, the majority of herbivorous mammals were perissodactyls, the family of mammals which includes horses, rhinoceroses, and tapirs. Their success was due, in part, to the fact that their simpler stomachs were more suited to digest nutritious plants of the understory. With rainforests so widespread, they found their niche as ground-level browsers. Slowly, artiodactyls were replacing even the largest perissodactyls; in China, the last of the indricotheres, the largest mammals to ever walk the earth, lived alongside some of the first giraffes. While perissodactyls were still commonplace on most plains, they became far outnumbered by strange artiodactyls.

A glimpse at life from the late Miocene of North America, by Jay Matternes. While rhinoceroses and horses were still common, they were outnumbered by camels, pigs, and other artiodactyls.

Grass is low in nutrients and requires a complex multi-chambered stomach to fully reap its benefits. Artiodactyls were already well-equipped - with three to four stomachs, depending on the family, they were quick to radiate onto the prairies and begin grazing. All over the world, brand new families of mammals were springing up - giraffes, true antelope, cattle, and hippopotami were widespread from mainland Europe and Africa all the way to eastern China. Camels, pigs, and pronghorns filled virtually every herbivorous niche in North America.

Some artiodactyls even became some of the most fearsome predators to roam the American plains. The entelodont Daeodon was as tall as a man at the shoulders and twice as long as a man's height, and was the veritable tyrannosaur of the Miocene. It was far larger than any other mammalian carnivore of its environment, and its power and jaws would have scared any other predator from its kill in an instant.

The terrible pig Daeodon approaching the carcass of the rhinoceros Teleoceras on the plains of North America. The artist Chavez describes Daeodon was "the T. rex of the Miocene."

In a few million years, grasslands the world over were populated by a myriad of never-before-seen grazers and browsers. Stephen Jay Gould's The Book of Life has an awesome two-page spread comparing Miocene North American and modern African mammals, and the similarity between the two faunas is incredible. However, the land wasn't the only place which was experiencing a faunal sea change.

The Endless Coast: Life in the oceans
The fertile oceans of the Miocene created an explosion in the abundance of large marine life. Not since the late Cretaceous, when seas were full of serpents, had the oceans seen such diversity and size. Cetaceans, pinnipeds, seabirds, and sharks were all at the peak of their diversity, most inhabiting the tremendous proto-Pacific Ocean. In those days, the Bering Sea had not yet opened up, and an expansive land bridge still connected Siberia to Alaska.

The physeteroid Zygophyseter, a whale not as large as sperm whales
today but just as intimidating.

All along this endless coastline, marine life flourished. The first recognizable dolphins, baleen whales, belugas, and porpoises abounded. Physeteroid whales, represented today by the sperm whale, were the first cetaceans evolved to prey upon other cetaceans. With their huge, pointed teeth, they were the orcas of their day. In recent years, the discovery of the enormous physeteroid Livyatan revealed just how large these predators could be - the size of a modern sperm whale, Livyatan (formerly Leviathan) sported both top and bottom teeth which were so large they have previously been mistaken for the tusks of mastodons. These carnivores likely specialized in feeding on smaller baleen whales, as well as smaller cetaceans and sharks. Strange rhabdosteid whales, like giant river dolphins, also patrolled the waters, feeding on small fish and cephalopods. Whales would never again be so diverse, though their prominent role in marine ecology would remain.

The four-tusked walrus Gomphotaria pugnax (top)
alongside other Miocene pinnipeds and flightless
auks on the ancient Californian coast. Reconstruction
by avancna on deviantArt.

Pinnipeds, including seals, sea lions, and walruses, were also incredibly diverse. A variety of predatory pinnipeds evolved to feed on the abundance of flesh in the water. Many evolved stranger dentition than any pinniped seen today; the walrus-relative Pelagiarctos (literally, "sea bear") sported sharp canines ideal for hunting smaller seals. Another relative, Gomphotaria, sported two pairs of tusks, blunter and shorter than the modern walrus's, ideal for rooting up and smashing shellfish. All along the proto-Pacific coast, pinnipeds of all sizes and relations were common. Some reached sizes comparable to those of modern elephant seals, making them the largest seals to ever swim.


A few coastal mammals during the Miocene were some of the strangest to ever live. From Baja California to Japan, one group of tubby mammals stood out from all the rest: the bizarre desmostylians. These mammals are closely related to both sirenians, including dugongs and manatees, as well as proboscideans such as elephants. However, their affinity with these groups, beyond the fact that there is some affinity, is largely unknown. The desmostylians were a chimera of oddities, sort of like a hippopotamus with a strunken head and giant, paddle-like feet. They were herbivorous, filling niches that sirenians would have in more tropical waters; the coldness of their environment allowed them to exploit such a niche. The desmostylians were a relatively short-lived group, evolving in the late Oligocene, just before the Miocene, and lasting to the end of the next period. They have no living relations beyond questionably related elephants and manatees.

Skeletal reconstruction and life restoration of the bizarre aquatic
mammal Paleoparadoxia. Life restoration by Roman Uchytel.

While marine life was strange throughout the world, the shores of one continent held perhaps the most bizarre and unlikely of all coastal creatures. This island continent was a land seemingly lost in time, still ruled by tremendous reptiles, towering rodents, birds that could run down and kill horses, and vultures the size of airplanes.

The Real Lost World
South America has always been a land of the strange, largely due to the fact that, up until a couple million years ago, it was still an island continent. Since the Mesozoic, it had been separated from all other continents, and thus South American fauna evolved independently of all other life on earth. The huge equatorial continent was a labyrinth of forests and swamps, and had any man set foot on such a land, they would have surely though they had stumbled into a nightmare.

A bit south of the endless coastline from southern California to southeastern Asia, the diversity and weirdness of the proto-Pacific did not stop in South America. The Peruvian coast has provided exquisite fossils representing a Galapagos-like environment chock full of seabirds, including several species of giant penguin, boobies (teehee), gannets, and saw-toothed pelicans. But beyond the myriad of bird species, one mammal ventured where none of its kind had been before: for a brief moment in time, sloths became ocean explorers.

The sea-sloth Thalassocnus. Reconstruction by Guillermo Navalon Fernandez. Alright, I'll admit, this represents the Pliocene Pisco Formation, a few million years later, but it's the best reconstruction I could find.

That's right, there were once marine ground sloths. Thalassocnus was a large sloth which evolved in a very different direction of its giant cousins of the savannahs, for instead of browsing treetops, it was an able swimmer that grazed on sea grasses. The sea-sloths lived alongside the bizarre whales of the coastal proto-Pacific, and if they had ventured far enough out at sea, they would have likely fallen prey to physeteroids and sharks, including the mega-shark Carcharocles (/Carcharodon) megalodon, which swam just beyond the South American coastline.

The giant caiman Purussaurus, which shared its environment
with several other giant crocodilians.

Northern South America at the time was largely covered in wetlands, and these huge steamy areas of water and vegetation were the ideal environment for giant reptiles. Enormous crocodilians, including the giant caiman Purussaurus, the huge gharial Gryposuchus, and the huge filter-feeding croc Mourasuchus all lived alongside one another, each reaching lengths upwards of 10m. The combination of heat, humidity, and area all contributed to the continued reign of giant reptiles. These tremendous creatures shared their environment with a variety of other strange reptiles including the stupendous turtle Stupendemys, as well as the largest rodents to ever live. Some, like Phoberomys, the "fearsome mouse," reached lengths of 3m, and would have made ideal prey for the crocodilians of the area.

Perhaps even more bizarre, and a bit frightening, is the fact that South American crocodilians at the time were not restricted to the water. Like taking a glance back to the Mesozoic, big land-crocodiles were still terrorizing the land, preying upon large mammals both in the wetlands and on dry land. Sebecosuchians, like rauisuchians from the Triassic, searched for prey on long legs which held their bodies high above the ground for easy movement on land. The fact that such dinosaurian wildlife continued to exist in South America, long after the reign of reptiles had ended across the rest of the globe (except for Australia, where enormous monitor lizards were predators par none), is an eye-opening discovery, and holds testament to just how isolated the continent was from the rest of the planet.

"Return to the Triassic," an aptly-named reconstruction of Miocene Venezuela. The sebecid Langstonia attacks the giant tapir-like mammal Granastrapotherium. Reconstruction by Zimices, from deviantArt.

The Miocene was a time of strangeness in every aspect of life. The shift in climate left behind a primordial world of unrecognizable mammals and created the brave new world of modern life on Earth. Many species of the Miocene would have been fairly recognizable to those living today, as many of the families of animals found today had their origins during this time. Yet, in the first period of "modernity," life was still extremely foreign - life had not been this big, this diverse, and this weird since the time of the dinosaurs.

Moves like Jaguar

When big cats inhabit a certain region for long enough, they learn to specialize in whatever prey is available to them. (Duh.) It's a true testament to their variability and adaptability, and many local populations of cats pick up behaviors unseen anywhere else in their natural ranges. Some lions, for example, build Schwarzenegger-style muscles by charging through water to tackle buffalo in central Africa. Others are the typical plains-dwellers, chasing down wildebeest and zebras.

Jaguars Panthera onca are among the most adaptable of the big cats, and are powerful to boot. Ranging from South America to southern Arizona and Texas, they can be found in habitats ranging from wetlands to rainforests to savannahs and deserts. In each environment, they are the kings of their territory, able to hunt virtually any large prey in their area. In Costa Rica, jaguars have been hunting sea turtles which have come to shore to nest. They have also been known to attack the world's largest snake, the anaconda.

With powerful windpipe-crushing jaws and puncturing canines, jaguars make short work of whatever has the misfortune to wind up in their mouths. Turtle and armadillos shells and snake scales don't stand a chance. They are truly built for general predation, and will at least try to eat whatever they can manage.

Recently, wildlife photographer Justin Black captured footage of a large male jaguar known to local biologists as, awesomely enough, "Mick Jaguar." Looking at photos of Mick, you can see he's been through his fair share of life: blind in one eye and riddled with scars, the bulky cat has clearly been around the block more than a few times. In Black's series of photos, however, Mick reveals his true power as he swam across the River Cuiaba in the Brazilian Pantanal solely to hunt a basking caiman.

 

The photos, needless to say, are sick, in a holy-crap-I-wish-I-had-seen-this-in-person way. Such an encounter is not uncommon in the wild, but capturing such incredible footage is definitely rare. The eight-foot-long Yacare caiman Caiman yacare was carried off by Mick "like it was a doggie bone," according to Black.

For more photos and a full article, follow this link to Daily Mail Online.

The Plating Game: Probable sexual dimorphism in stegosaurs

Famed (unfairly so) for their small intellectual potential and vast body size, as well as two rows of bony plates running down the back and a tail tipped with spikes, stegosaurs are among the most easily recognizable dinosaurs out there. They co-dominated the Jurassic Period alongside sauropods as the most abundant herbivorous dinosaurs in the world, stolidly grazing on fern prairies all across Laurasia, the northern landmass.

As famous and popular as they are, we know very little about stegosaur biology. Infant stegosaurs are known from a few extremely fragmentary remains, and eggs are practically, if not totally, unknown. However, a recent discovery (thanks to CT scanning) made by Evan Saitta, a senior at Princeton, has revealed that there is a surefire way to differentiate between male and female stegosaurs: by looking at their plates.

A male-female pair of stegosaurs in repose. Another male lingers in the background. Illustration by Connor Ross.

Many dinosaurs, especially ornithischians, are instantly recognizable by their outlandish anatomical features. It's true that no one pays as much attention to a relatively "bland" little hypsilophodontian than they to do the frills of ceratopsids, the crests of lambeosaurs, or, in this case, the plates of stegosaurs. These features are sometimes identified as "nametags" within species or thermoregulatory structures; however, it is now becoming more and more clear that these bizarre appendages were probably used in sexual display. Such structures are sexually selected, a process of evolution differing from natural selection*. Those individuals with larger, brighter, or generally more impressive ________ (frills, horns, antlers, plates, sails, etc.) will pass on those impressive genes to their offspring, making them irresistible to the opposite sex.

So, how does one tell the difference between male and female stegosaurs by solely examining fossils? It turns out that one gender sported broader, more ovoid plates than the other, which carried more taller, more slender plates. Which plates belong to which gender remains to be seen, but I wouldn't be surprised if the males had the wider, larger plates than the females. When it comes to sexual selection, this is generally the case; males sport larger and flashier features than females.

While other uses for stegosaur plates, including thermoregulation, have not been ruled out, and still may be very likely, but confirming at least one suspicion about the still-very-mysterious biology of stegosaurs is one step in the right direction to uncovering just how these animals lived.

Giant theropods will NIBBLE YOU TO DEATH

Sorry for the lack of updates for a while, everyone! I've been keeping busy with summer class and work, but now I finally have a bit of free time and will start writing again.

More often than not, the fossils of truly gigantic sauropods are found in the same formations as equally gargantuan theropods. There is no doubt that these predators fed on sauropods once in a while but, being extinct and all, it's extremely difficult to determine just how they fed. Most depictions show allosaurs and carcharodontosaurs leaping onto the backs of unsuspecting saurpods, or clamping their toothy jaws around the herbivore's neck.

When the sizes of contemporary sauropods and theropods are compared, we notice something: sauropods were friggin' HUGE. Even those theropods which are theorized to have been pack-hunters would struggle with taking down an adult super-sauropod. Of course, this doesn't mean that the carnivores were forced to starve; there were plenty of smaller, more easily-subdued critters to eat. Facing an animal which weighed as much as an entire herd of elephants could not only fail, it poses a serious risk of injury and even death to the hunters. How, then, could a predator get a taste of sauropod without risking fatal injuries?

The contemporary giants Tyrannosaurus rex and Alamosaurus sanjuanensis. You can see that, as big as T. rex was, the sauropod is tremendously bigger.

Welcome to the wonderful world of flesh-grazing!
The cookiecutter shark is a species of shark which barely reaches 2ft in length. However, its main prey includes animals which are monumentally larger than it is, including, among other things, whales, seals, dolphins, tuna, and other large sharks. How does such a tiny creature eat such big meals?

It manages to do so because it doesn't prey upon the entire animal. The cookiecutter shark rasps small plugs of skin from its prey, which not only provides it with a meal, but also leaves the rest of the animal alive for repetetive feedings. If you think about it, killing an animal which is much larger than yourself is not only dangerous, it is wasteful: if an allosaur was to take down a giant sauropod by itself, there is no way it could eat the entire animal. Even a pack would leave remains, which would be picked up by other carnivores or simply left to rot.

Even the modestly-sized (for a sauropod) Camarasaurus may have been a bit too much to handle for an adult Allosaurus.

Recent analyses of theropod skull biomechanics show that even large predators had relatively fragile skulls. In a recent post, I summarized a study of Allosaurus feeding mechanics which showed that the animal fed with rapid, jerking motions of its head like a modern falcon. A previous study, concerning Allosaurus' "hatchet" method of feeding, showed that running agape directly at the side of a giant sauropod would not only inflict minimal damage to the sauropod, it would break the jaw and possibly the neck of the Allosaurus.  The hatchet-like hunting method would be much more effective on smaller animals.

Even Tyrannosaurus displays certain features of its skull which indicate rapid, birdlike head motions. Perhaps, as these giants ran alongside titantic sauropods, they could quickly strip morsels of meat from the sides of their prey and run off unnoticed. This would not only leave the prey alive for future feedings, it would greatly reduce the possibility of risk or failed attacked by the predators.

The Case of the Leaping Acrocanthosaurus
Fossilized footprints from the carcharodontosaur Acrocanthosaurus atokensis are particularly well-known throughout Texas, where it once dwelled beside the super-sauropod Sauroposeidon proteles. One preserved trackway shows the footprints of the predator trailing a dozen or so of these sauropods, and in one segment of the track, the Acrocanthosaurus appears to have leaped onto the side of one of them. However, the tracks of the sauropod do not appear to change in speed or direction, suggesting that the predator did not hang onto the herbivore for very long, if at all.



As if the Tyrannosaurus/Alamosaurus comparison wasn't startling enough, there's a snowball's chance in Hell that a lone Acrocanthosaurus could ever take down an adult Sauroposeidon. The possible "attack" footprints are shown below the skeletals.

Perhaps this is evidence of Acrocanthosaurus not viciously attacking Sauroposeidon, but simply snagging a strip of meat from its side before parting from the herd. It is certainly much more plausible than an Acrocanthosaurus actually bringing down one of the giants, especially when the sizes of both animals are compared...

Being an apex predator means that you have the size and tenacity to eat basically every bit of flesh in your environment. None of these giant theropods would have had trouble finding something to eat. The question at hand is whether or not they were bold enough to tackle such monumental prey as the biggest of the sauropods, or whether their main quarry were smaller animals. And, while sauropods could certainly fend for themselves, it is very possible that unnoticed bits of muscle and skin could be torn off once in a while.

What do you get when you cross a turtle, a seahorse, and a beaked whale?

Turns out, you would get the newly-described turtle dubbed Ocepechelon bouyai. Hailing from the latest Cretaceous of Morocco, this turtle was far from out of place: at the time, North Africa was covered in a shallow sea that hosted a variety of strange marine reptiles, including sea snakes and mosasaurs, as well as other species of turtle. But nothing could even come close to the weirdness of Ocepechelon.

Dorsal (left) and ventral views of the holotype skull of Ocepechelon bouyai. From Bardet et. al, 2013.

All we know of the turtle thus far is its skull, but skulls are often the most revealing fossils, especially when they're as outlandish as that of Ocepechelon. Measuring 70cm long, it is clear that this turtle was a giant, definitely one of the largest to ever live. But what makes the skull particularly unique is its shape and, thus, its function: although it is very long, it tapers into a very slender and narrow mouth, the opening of which measures only 6cm in diameter.

Lateral view of the holotype skull of Ocepechelon. From Bardet et. al, 2013.

This pipe-like tube of a mouth is reminiscent of animals which aren't even slightly related to turtles, namely beaked whales*, pipefish and seahorses. All of these animals have tiny mouths when compared to the size of their heads, and all feed on tiny prey using suction as their primary hunting method. It would appear that, without any adaptations to pin down, grasp, or pierce prey items, Ocepechelon was also a suction-feeder, spending its time close to the surface of the open Cretaceous seas, sucking in jellies and cephalopods which lingered nearby.

*Also strangely similar to whales is the position of Ocepechelon's nostrils: they are located far back on the skull, as far as turtles go. This also suggests it spent more time at the surface of the water.

Ocepechelon bouyai, in the flesh. I... Uh, I don't really know... What to say. It's just a weird, weird creature.

We often think of turtles as relicts of a bygone era, unchanged by the ages, deserving of that oft-misunderstood title of "living fossils." However, over the course of their 250-million-year-old history, it is more than clear that turtles have evolved into an incredibly diverse group. Surely Ocepechelon is the tube-mouthed figurehead of turtle diversity.

References

Bardet, Nathalie, Nour-Eddine Jalil, France de Lapparent de Broin, Damien Germain, Olivier Lambert, and Mbarek Amaghzaz. 2013. “A Giant Chelonioid Turtle from the Late Cretaceous of Morocco with a Suction Feeding Apparatus Unique Among Tetrapods.” PLoS ONE 8 (7) (July 11): e63586. doi:10.1371/journal.pone.0063586.

For more on giant, weird turtles, see...

http://naturalselectionsblog.blogspot.com/2013/03/whats-big-aquatic-warm-blooded-and-has.html

A Brief History of Caenagnathids in Film and Television

"Skinny hands and new jaws," a caenagnathid panoply. Reconstructions by Qilong, from deviantArt.

The family Caenagnathidae derives its name from the Latin "recent jaws," as the great Charles H. Sternberg (the pater familis of a family of historic paleontologists), assigned the fossilized jaw he discovered to an advanced Cretaceous bird. It's not such an uncommon phenomenon to misidentify particularly birdlike non-avian dinosaur fossils as birds; the same has happened with a variety of alvarezsaurs, the tiny short-armed anteater theropods, as well as troodontids and other families of coelurosaurs. Of course, if we were able to observe caegnathids and other coelurosaurs in the flesh, they would even act like big birds, so the confusion is totally understandable.

Anyway, the caenagnathids were a very bizarre bunch, even compared to other oviraptors. To start, they were completely toothless, a feature not found in many non-avian theropods. This indicates a varied diet - the caenagnathids were probably herbivorous, though their toothlessness allowed them to take anything, including small prey. As most species were fairly large to absolutely gigantic in size, the likelihood for herbivory is high. Cliched though it is, it's likely that the caenagnathids had a diet similar to large extant ratites such as ostriches and cassowaries. And, like the cassowary, the caenagnathids display another odd feature - a large, bony crest on the top of their heads. Like so many bizarre skeletal features found on extinct species, we're not quite sure what the crest was used for, but it likely had some function in heat dispersal, call amplification, or courtship.

On to my main point: being as bizarre and obscure as they are, it's always a treat to see caenagnathids portrayed in documentaries and [a] movie. However, out of the variety of caenagnathids which have been discovered, only two genera have been portrayed so far: the gargantuan Gigantoraptor and, in the upcoming Walking With Dinosaurs 3D, Epichirostenotes*. 

*Although the genus has not been confirmed, Epichirostenotes was a contemporary of Pachyrhinosaurus and Edmontonia, which can also be seen in the available trailers.

The Gigantoraptor of Dinosaur Revolution, complete with
wattles and glossy feathers. You go, DR!

It makes sense that Gigantoraptor was the first to be portrayed; like Tyrannosaurus, it's the biggest of its family, which, in pop culture, gives its automatic popularity. The big beast has been reconstructed in two documentaries, Dinosaur Revolution and Planet Dinosaur (both from 2011). In both, oddly, it was depicted performing elaborate courtship displays. I only say "oddly" because, while it totally makes sense that they did engage in such displays, we have no direct evidence of any sort of courtship behavior. It just makes me wonder how both production companies making the documentaries ended up having the same animals doing basically the same thing independently of each other. Anyway, I have to say that I much prefer DR's Gigantoraptor; they even gave the male this awesome wattle clearly* based on that of a Temminck's tragopan. The 'raptor from Planet Dinosaur was a li'l too reptilian for me and looked like a big ol' rubber chicken.

A pair of Gigantoraptor performing a courtship display from
Planet Dinosaur (2011). I wasn't too impressed with these guys. Meh.

*Clearly. Jeez, I sound like such a bird snob sometimes.

A couple of days ago, yet another preview for the upcoming philm phenomenon Walking With Dinosaurs 3D was released. Although a lot of it is reused footage from the first trailer, a few interesting bits popped out (including the fact that it will probably be narrated by a pachyrhinosaur... ugh.). Among these bits was a dinosaur which I, and many others, was surprised to see: a caenagnathid, presumably representing the genus Epichirostenotes of the 72-million-year-old Horseshoe Canyon Formation. I'm especially excited to see this animal on the big screen, even though the it is portrayed in the trailer biting at some young pachyrhinosaurs in the dead of night. I don't support this notion that they were nocturnal predators, but to be fair, this is the first I've ever seen this idea and it is a movie.

Epichirostenotes from the new WWD3D trailer, seen here as a creepy nocturnal baby-killer, which it probably was not.

True Blood (from a mammoth)

Frozen woolly mammoths Mammuthus primigenius are exciting and very revealing discoveries when they are found. They usually reveal important clues on their ecology and biology, as well as their growth cycle; we know of frozen mammoths ranging from infants to elderly individuals. Because of the subzero temperatures of their final resting place (the north of Russia, generally), they are remarkably well-preserved, with internal organs, skin, and hair all frozen in time.

A test tube of mammoth blood. Hoooooly crap. Photograph by Semyon Grigoriev.

This week, something even more startling was recovered from one of these frozen titans. Liquid blood. This isn't an internet scam or a too-good-to-be-true hoax: a small test tube of liquid blood from the sample was collected, and will be analyzed to determine just how it managed to stay liquid for 10,000 years. The mammoth, a female, was found with the lower half of her body very well preserved, though the upper half was visibly gnawed on by other animals. This indicates that she probably died in a bog or swamp, becoming stuck in deep water or mud.

What does this liquid blood imply? Could this fuel the increasingly common idea to clone extinct animals if we can? And what would we be able to do with a cloned mammoth? Only time will tell how this startling new discovery fuels the future for extinct animals.