the-cosmic-goddess: virgogreen:Fun fact, this may actually account for many of the “imaginings” we
the-cosmic-goddess: virgogreen: Fun fact, this may actually account for many of the “imaginings” we have of extinct animals. I had a molecular biology professor who referred it to “vacuum packing” where many extinct animals are rendered slimmer or muscular than they may have been, since things like body fat and fur are not preserved during fossilization. So our view of animals like dinosaurs may be entirely inaccurate. There’s actually a book, All Yesterdays, in which the artist, CM Koseman, draws modern animals as we might have interpreted them to look if we found them extinct the same way do dinosaurs. Fun examples include: The manatee An elephant Swans And literally the picture of the hippo Another funny thing to add to this…because of how fossils are formed, it’s possible we don’t know what type of dinosaurs were different species or the same species. If we compare the skeletons to modern animals, snake skeletons often look pretty much the same so if all snakes were extinct we may believe they were all one species of animal instead of hundreds. Meanwhile, all dog breeds are considered the same species Canis lupus familiaris (technically domestic dogs are a subspecies of Canus lupus, the Grey Wolf, but you get what I mean) despite their skeletons being drastically different from each other (compare a pug skull to a great dane and to a poodle…they’ll look different). So, if all snakes were mistaken for being only a small handful of species and modern dogs could be mistaken for a BUNCH of unique different species…think about how that knowledge can reflect onto our current understanding of extinct animals. -- source link