Here we are again! It’s been a while since I’ve written about some old news, you could also say that you thought this column was extinct. Yeah, I went there.
Honestly though it’s been too long since I’ve sat down and dropped prehistoric knowledge bombs. Today I’m going to talk about some really cool, really big, really dead animals that technically aren’t dinosaurs. To clarify that though first I’m gonna walk through what a dinosaur is and what a dinosaur isn’t.
Dinosaurs are technically only those reptilian animals of the clade Dinosauria. To be fair, this is a fairly broad term. Humans belong to the Primate clade, which also includes many species of apes, monkey and lemurs. Every species in a clade evolved from a single ancestor, and can contain many different families of organisms. Commonly depicted families of dinosaur include the ankylosauria, the stegosauria, the sauropoda, and the theropoda. Theropods include the majority of the carnivorous dinosaurs including the Tyrannosaur and many species of Raptor.
Alright, now that we’ve talked about what IS a dinosaur, let’s discuss what ISN’T a dinosaur.
My personal favourite example of NOT a dinosaur is the Mastodon. The Mastodon, sometimes known as the Wooly Mammoth, is an extinct genetic relative of the Elephant. You probably have a picture that comes to mind when you hear the name Mastodon (or Mammoth). A large, lumbering beast with a trunk and massive tusks. Yes, this internal picture might be derived entirely from the Ice Age movies, but it’s fairly accurate.
The Mastodon, of which the American Mastodon is the best known, went extinct around 11,000 years ago and lived in North and Central America. The circumstances surrounding their extinction are a little murky, as happens when there is literally no recorded history. Many paleontologists tie their downfall to the disappearance of other species of megafauna, and overhunting by hunters of the Clovis culture. The Clovis people were a prehistoric Stone Age civilization from North America.
I find the very idea of the Mastodon intriguing. Imagine strolling through the woods near your house and coming across a two and a half metre tall beast of animal that could literally crush you by sitting on you. Fully grown males could reach over 3m in height, and weight over 10 tonnes. Mastodons had a fairly structured society. The females and youth lived together in herds, and once they reached maturity the males would either live a solitary life or in small groups. Even Mastodons are allowed to have friends.
Mastodons were browsing herbivores, but in a different sense than ordering food online. Browsing is herbivory talk for animals eating leaves, shoots, of fruits from shrubs. Moose browse when they eat.
Moving on from Mastodon and going very far back in time I’m going to briefly discuss the Pteranodon. I’ve already covered the Pteranodon extensively in a previous issue of Old News, but I just want to cover quickly why they’re so cool.
Pteranodons lived during the Cretaceous Era alongside many actual dinosaurs, but are a member of the pterosauria family and obviously not real dinosaurs. Pteranodons are pretty sweet for pretty much one reason: they could fly. The average wingspan of a male Pteranodon was 5.6 m, and larger specimens with wingspans of up to 8 m have been reconstructed. The predators were quite lithe and nimble though; mass estimates range from as low as 22 – 93 kg on average. However, the guesses on the large end of the spectrum have been largely debunked in recent years. Analysis shows that to carry that amount of weight the wing bones of the creatures would have had to have been stronger than aluminum.
Their wing shape suggests that they would have flown in a similar fashion to an albatross. Using rapid burst of wing flapping separated by long sections of soaring, the Pteranodons could likely fly for hours without tiring.
My third and final species of discussion this week is the Elasmosaurus, an aquatic dinosaur. While the Elasmosaurus IS technically a dinosaur it qualifies for this issue by being just totally awesome. The Elasmosaurus is the closest thing I’ve seen to a real, dead, Loch Ness Monster. There’s really not a better representation of a sea monster. These creatures were around 10 m long, and that was mostly neck. Their relatively small body was equipped with flippers to help it move easily through the water. Looking closer at the skeleton, this creature is literally made of the stuff of nightmares. There’s actually a very impressive, and terrifying, reconstructed skeleton at the Canadian Museum of Nature in Ottawa.
Obviously we can’t tell the hunting habits of the Elasmosaurus, but based on its physiology there are a few assumptions which can be made. The Elasmosaurus was likely a slow, but agile, swimmer. It probably swam low in the water and used its long neck to snare fish out of schools. The dinosaur also had a small tail, which lead to a funny coincidence when it was discovered. The neck of the Elasmosaurus has 72 vertebrae, and the tail has 10, and typically animals have longer tails than necks. In 1868 the Elasmosaurus was unveiled with its skull on the end of its tail. Also, there’s a species of it called the Terminonatator, so that’s awesome.
So there you have it, two sweet non-dinosaurs and one sweet dinosaur. Until next time!
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