When left in the right environment, animals can become fossilized over thousands and millions of years. Almost everything we know about the prehistoric world has been learned from the discovery of fossils, and they've proven to be an incredible window into the past. While something can be learned from all of them, there are undoubtedly some of them that are more important and fascinating than the rest.
So join me for today's video. We're going to take a look at 15 incredible animal fossils. Number 15. Hematite Tubes Ever since scientists realized that fossils were the remains of creatures from long ago, there's been a drive to find evidence of the first types of life to ever develop on our planet. Amazingly, a study that was published in 2017 revealed details of a set of fossils that not only predate anything that's ever been seen before, but can be dated far earlier than anyone had expected of any life forms to exist.
Our planet is around 4.5 billion years old, and it's extremely hard to look back to the earliest stages. because the Earth's crust is constantly recycling itself. There are a few outcrops of rock that remain, though, and it's within one of these, which was found in northern Quebec in Canada, that produced unexpected results. Dated to more than 3.77 billion years old, and potentially originating more than 4 billion years ago, the researchers took thin slices of the rock and discovered tiny tubes within it that were made up of an iron oxide called hematite, and hematite filaments that branch out from them. These look exactly like other, more recent fossils that have been found and determined to have been formed by bacteria around deep-sea hydrothermal vents, and are now seen as evidence that lifeforms like this must have been around surprisingly early in the Earth's development.
While these fossils may be tiny, they're arguably some of the most important to have ever been discovered. Number 14. T-Rex In 2005, something that was previously thought to be impossible was found during an archaeological dig in Montana, and it would take 8 years before scientists could explain what had happened. The discovery was a leg fossil of an adolescent T-Rex, but within it, there was some soft tissue that was described as being soft, transparent, and flexible.
This was completely unexpected, because it had previously been thought that the proteins in soft tissue should completely degrade in less than a million years, even in the best conditions. So. how a 68 million year old sample survived was a mystery. Analysis of the material confirmed that it was soft tissue from a dinosaur and that it was very similar to bird collagen.
It then encouraged researchers to test other fossils and they found traces of soft material in more than half of samples. It's just something they had never bothered to look for before. It's thought that the reason this preservation is possible is because of iron that's released from blood following death. Tiny nanoparticles are formed and it started to act like formaldehyde, preserving the tissue far longer than would otherwise be expected.
The discovery has had far-reaching consequences for paleontological science, because with this new material to study, far more can be learned about the biology of dinosaurs. Number 13. The Giant Prehistoric Turtle Turtles are some of the most majestic and loved animals of all, and are an incredible, often rare sight to see in oceans around the world. Today, though, there's just a fraction of the number of species of turtles that have existed throughout history.
And in 2012, researchers announced the discovery of a particularly special species that lived around 60 million years ago in what is now known as Columbia. The fossils had been discovered in 2005 in a coal mine and led to the animal being called the Carbonemes confrani, which means cold turtle. Initially, a skull was found, which measured nine and a half inches long, and then soon after, the shell was found too. which measured about 5 feet 7 inches long.
The specimen was a type of side-necked turtle, and was the first of a size like this to have been found in the region, proving that gigantism in freshwater turtles actually existed. Not only was the size surprising, but the fossil also proved that this species had an incredibly powerful jaw. With it being an omnivore, it would have meant that the animal could have made quick work of most things it wanted to eat, including mollusks, smaller turtles, and potentially even crocodiles. To this day, only one specimen fossil has been found of this species, and this is probably because of how large an area would have been needed to support just one of them. They needed to eat huge amounts of food to sustain their size, and likely took control of large territories, meaning it's unlikely any other individuals would have been close enough to get caught in the material that created this particular fossil deposit.
Number 12. The Monster of Spitsbergen We've only discovered fossil evidence of a tiny proportion of the species, portion of all the animals that have existed on our planet. There's no knowing how many frightful, prehistoric beasts there are still to discover. Researchers from Oslo University came face-to-face with a new horror from the deep in 2012, when they discovered a fossil on the remote island of Spitsbergen, which is on the Svalbard Island chain and is known as an Arctic graveyard for ancient animals. During the expedition, they discovered a new fossil that was on the island They found the remains of 28 pliosaurs and ichthyosaurs, which were the dominant marine predators in the region around 150 million years ago. But the one that stood out became known as simply the monster, and it dwarfed the others.
Thought to have been 50 feet long, it was described as having vertebrae the size of dinner plates and sharp teeth the size of cucumbers. It was the type of pliosaur which would have had two flippers to swim with, and because of its size, likely hunted smaller ones of its own species. as well as virtually anything else it encountered in the water.
Fossils of these animals are relatively rare, and a complete one has never been found. But this find was more intact than most others, and included a skull that's one of the biggest on record. The question that remains, though, is quite how large these animals could potentially grow to be.
Some experts believe we're yet to find a mega-monster of the deep that's even bigger. 11. Ancient Snails The study of fossils can be fascinating in the way that it reveals the existence of animals that have long been extinct, but also because they can show the distant ancestors of creatures that are still around today, and show us how things have changed over time. In 2016, a fossil collector from Myanmar sold a piece of amber to a researcher from the University of Geosciences in Beijing, and what it contained was a surprise to everyone.
Amber fossils are some of the most perfectly preserved types of fossils of all. But so many things have to go right in order for them to form that are extremely rare. And this one was created when sap was released by a tree and covered two tiny land snails around 99 million years ago. Despite measuring less than a fifth of an inch or about a half a centimeter in length, one of the snails was remarkably preserved. Normally, it's just their shells that fossilize.
But in this specimen, there was also the head, the foot, and an eyestalk, which represents the oldest ever example of soft snail tissues having been preserved. After studying the fossil in detail, it became clear that this was a species that's related to modern-day land snails that live in tropical and subtropical environments, and has many of the same structures that are commonplace today. Amber fossils from Myanmar, of which there are now more than a thousand, have been found in much larger numbers in the past decade, and are proving to be at the forefront of fossil research.
This incredible one with the snails could well just be the beginning of plenty of discoveries that will happen in the coming years. 10. Mosquito with blood When Jurassic Park was released, there was skepticism surrounding the idea that fossilized mosquitoes could be found with blood samples from prehistoric animals. But in the decades since the story was first published, there have been several discoveries that contain precisely that. One of the best examples was found in northwestern Montana in 2013, where, around 46 million years ago, a mosquito fed on a meal and then, for some reason, died and sank to the bottom of a pond. Over a long period of time, it was slowly covered with sediment and became encased within a piece of shale.
Researchers could hardly believe what they were looking at when a sample was put under a microscope, because it appeared that it had a blood-filled abdomen. And it was only after using a scanning electron microscope and a mass spectrometer that they could show that there were indeed traces of iron and porphyrin molecules, which is proof of blood. It had previously been assumed that genetic material from so long ago simply couldn't be preserved.
But this discovery has completely changed that idea. The next step of the study will be to carefully remove a sample of the blood without damaging the specimen, and then looking to find how the different blood molecules have survived over time, and if there's a chance that the animal the blood came from could be identified. It's far from being possible to bring prehistoric animals back to life, but the potential to find blood samples from some species opens up a whole new way to explore the past and more fully understand the animals that used to roam the planet.
as well as the environmental conditions that surrounded them at the time as well. 9. Four-Legged Snake The evolutionary history of snakes has long been of interest to researchers, specifically whether they emerged from the oceans without limbs or whether this was an adaptation that developed later on. Fossils, to prove one way or another, were proving to be elusive, but one find that was announced in 2015 changed all that. The fossil is of a serpentine-like creature with a short tail and a long body that could have moved like the snakes of today. It showed signs of being a borrower, which means it was land-based, and crucially, it had small limbs.
The problem with this fossil, though, is that it came from a private collection without any data detailing where it originated from. Without this crucial piece of evidence, it's not the game-changing discovery that many were hoping for. While the rock that it's contained within appears to point towards the Crato Formation, a place in Brazil that dates back to 130 million years ago, there are further questions about whether it was legally acquired.
Usually, specimens like this aren't studied by the scientific community to ensure fossil collectors adhere to international law. So it's hoped that another one with full providence will be found soon to be able to answer the mystery once and for all. 8. Ancient Shark Attack One way of learning about prehistoric animals is by studying the fossils they leave behind.
But this comes with a limitation, as some animals are more likely to leave fossils than others. Because of the way that most of their bodies are made of cartilage, it's extremely rare to find fossils of sharks, apart from their teeth, for example. But this doesn't mean that fossilized remains are unable to teach us anything about them. In 2011, researchers released the results of a study into an unusual fossil that had been found in a strip mine in North Carolina. Dating to around 3 or 4 million years ago, probably during the Pliocene era, it was the partially fossilized remains of a rib from a whale that was probably an ancestor of either the Great Blue or Humpback Whale.
What was strange about this fossil, though, was that there were three indentations on it. which have been identified as tooth marks. With 2.4-inch spacing between each of the marks, it's possible to infer the size of the mouth of whatever animal had attacked the whale. And the most likely candidate is either the most famous ancient marine predator, the megalodon, or another unknown large shark from the time.
What's possibly more amazing is that it can be proven that this was a failed attack on the whale. While the shark that attacked it may well have gotten away with a mouthful of flesh, It definitely didn't kill the whale, because the fossil has signs of what's known as woven bone, which grows quickly in reaction to a localized infection. This process is incomplete, however, so it's likely the whale died between two to six weeks after the attack seen on the bone, something that gives a fascinating insight into the lives of both the whale and the shark so long ago.
Number 7. Tail in Amber With only fossils to go by, it's difficult to know exactly how species from a long time ago looked, but a discovery in 2015 helped get a lot closer. Within a lump of amber that was on sale at a market in Myanmar was a perfectly preserved tail, complete with feathers. It formed in the mid-Cretaceous period around 99 million years ago and contains eight vertebrae from a juvenile theropod.
The tail is long and flexible, and feathers run down each side of it. Because of this structure, researchers are certain that the feathers come from a dinosaur and not a more recent bird. Scans of the specimen show that the animal would have been chestnut brown in color and also shed light into the development of the feathers. They don't have a well-defined central shaft like those seen today, but have fine branches that are found in the feathers of birds, which means the structure is developed before the central shafts. We know that modern bird species are the closest relatives to the dinosaurs that are still alive.
Discoveries like this support the idea that ancient reptiles were covered in feathers, meaning the prehistoric world probably looked very different from how it's usually depicted in modern times. 6. Baleen Whale In 1978, a junior at Rolling Hills High School in Orange County had been intrigued by a strange rock that was jutting out of the ground near his home. He enlisted a team of friends to dislodge it and take it back to his house. Weighing 1,000 pounds, or 450 kilograms, he spent the entire summer chiseling away at it. But to his dismay, he called an expert to take a look and was told it wasn't of any interest.
Thirty years later, however, his instincts were vindicated. With the help from a Los Angeles Natural History Museum, it was identified as the fossil of a baleen whale, one of just 20 specimens that have ever been found around the world. Furthermore, the fossil contained a section of the whale's baleen, which is what's used to filter out the krill when feeding. Something like this has only ever been found in fossilized forms four times in the past century.
Thought to be between 14 to 16 million years old, the waters that were once above this part of California were home to a large number of prehistoric whales, and it's not unusual to find fossils around the region. Ones in such good condition and of these specific parts of the whale are incredibly rare, though, and the museum gladly welcomed it as a part of the research collection to hopefully help learn more about the species in the future. Number 5. New Dinosaur Species The discovery of a new fossil can be an exciting moment, but the hard work has just begun.
Next, it needs to be identified to find out whether it's from an already recognized species or whether it's something that's completely new to science. This can be an extremely long process, as a story from 2014 shows. Researchers from the Smithsonian National Museum of Natural History, the Carnegie Museum of Natural History, and the University of Utah were studying three fossil skeletons that had been collected in 1990 and were being held in storage. Amazingly for them, rather than confirming which species one of them was, they instead proved that it was a previously undiscovered type of bird-like dinosaur that they chose to name Anzu Vailie, after a feathered creature from Mesopotamian mythology. The fossils had been found in the upper Cretaceous Hell Creek.
formation in North and South Dakota, and were the first proof that dinosaurs of its type existed in North America, with other similar species having previously only been found in Asia. It would have lived between 68 and 66 million years ago, at the same time as the T-Rex and Triceratops, and likely looked a lot like an ostrich, albeit one that grew to around 11 feet long. The Enzu-Vaillier probably became extinct around 66 million years ago, along with most other dinosaurs from the time. So despite having many characteristics similar to modern-day birds, they're not thought to be related to them. Instead, there were several other feathered dinosaurs that survived the extinction event, like velociraptors that are seen as their actual ancestors.
What's interesting about everything that we know about Megalodon, and the many surprising things you may have heard about them, is that everything has been deduced from surprisingly little physical evidence. As a species of mackerel shark, the strongest part of the Megalodon's body was its teeth, and a single individual could form as many as 40,000 in a lifetime. These were shed into the ocean and turned into fossils.
meaning they're one of the most common types of fossils that you can find at the beach. The teeth, though, make up the vast majority of Megalodon remains to have been found, because the rest of their bodies were made of soft cartilage that doesn't preserve as well. A dinner plate-sized vertebrae as well as a brain case with vertebrae have been found.
That's about everything that's been publicly acknowledged. Everything we hear about Megalodon, then, has been inferred by comparing the size of their teeth and vertebrae with those of sharks that are alive today. and deducing their size and behavior on the back of that.
It's possible, then, that we've got it completely wrong, and that they were potentially much smaller or even much larger than is currently thought, and it'll only be by finding a one-in-a-billion fossil that it's able to confirm this. In the meantime, if you want to go fossil hunting for yourself, then searching for a Megalodon tooth is a good place to start. They've been found on every continent apart from Antarctica, and can sometimes be seen sticking out of the sand around the coast.
Number 3. Ancient Toothed Whale Fossils can teach us so much about ancient animals, but also shine light on the behaviors of ones that are alive today. And an interesting example of this is a fossil from a toothed whale that was discovered in a mine in Hampton, Virginia in 1969. The skull fragment had been kept in a collection of the Smithsonian Museum of Natural History and labeled as a type of beluga whale, but for decades, no one looked any closer. Two researchers decided to do a full analysis in 2010. and found that it was from an entirely new species, which has now been named as the Boschaskaja monodontoidis, and had similarities in the snout and faces with those of belugas and narwhals. What's curious about this, though, is that this fossil, and another that was found in California, shows that the ancestors of these whales lived in warmer waters, while belugas and narwhals today only live and breed in Arctic and subarctic waters.
This means that the animals haven't always been limited to colder environments. and that something happened in the intervening time that forced them to adapt to an entirely new way of life. So far, the cause isn't known, but it's possible that the presence of new competitor species, the types of food that were available, or huge changes in oceanographic temperatures forced the whales to move north.
But one frightening discovery in a Colombian coal mine in 2009 suggests that, in the past, they became supersized. The fossils of 28 enormous snakes were found, which are now considered to be the largest serpents to have ever been found. ever been discovered and were given the name Titanoboa serrajuncis. Based on the evidence, it's believed that these monsters grew to around 42 feet or 12.8 meters long and may have weighed as much as 2,500 pounds or over 1,100 kilograms, well more than a ton.
It's likely that because of their size, they lived similar lives to anacondas in that they spent the vast majority of their time partially submerged in water, which meant they needed to use less energy to get around. Luckily for us, the Titanoboa lived around 58 million years ago, long before we evolved, so humans never had to encounter one of these. But even if we did, it wouldn't necessarily be fatal.
Because of the way Titanoboa's teeth were arranged, it's quite possible they only hunted fish, and at that time there would have been plenty of large species for them to target. As for their size, this is something that became possible because of the world's relatively hot climate that allowed cold-blooded animals to grow to enormous proportions. It's thought that with the current rate of climate change, similar conditions may well be possible in a few decades'time, and the result could be that gigantism in species like snakes could become commonplace once again. Number 1. Protoceratops and Velociraptor One of the most stunning fossils ever to be found was discovered by a team that was looking at white sandstone cliffs in the Gobi Desert in southern Mongolia. Dated to around 80 million years ago, it's of two dinosaurs, a Velociraptor and a Protoceratops, which were fighting each other when a sudden sand flow buried them.
Despite the Velociraptor being a vicious predator and the Protoceratops being a herbivore, both were clearly causing as much damage to each other as they could. The Velociraptor's foot claw was embedded in the neck of its prey, close to where the blood flow to its head would have been, while the Protoceratops looks like it had bitten and broken the right arm of its attacker. It's incredibly rare to find fossils that show moments of action like this, and it helped us to understand their behavior in a way that singular fossils are unable to. Previously, it would have been assumed that a Velociraptor would have made short work of the Protoceratops, but its victim clearly put up more of a struggle than it had expected.
which resulted in both of them being trapped in the mud for millennia. I'll see you next time. Watch our binge-watching playlist if you'd like to watch all of our most popular Top 15 videos. Grab a drink, grab a snack, and get ready to binge.