Earth’s ancient past was a time when creatures of unimaginable size ruled land, sea, and sky. While today’s elephants, whales, and crocodiles might seem enormous, they’re practically dwarfed by their prehistoric counterparts. These massive beasts lived in a world where being bigger often meant surviving longer, hunting more effectively, or defending against equally enormous predators. ...
For over a century, the fossil record pinned the rise of reptiles to around 320 million years ago, during the late Carboniferous period. But a serendipitous discovery in the rugged outcrops of southeastern Australia has thrown that timeline into chaos. A set of clawed footprints, preserved in a slab of rock no larger than a ...
They looked unwieldy, even absurd – creatures so oddly built that early scientists wondered if nature was pulling a prank. Yet these prehistoric misfits didn’t just survive; they thrived, rewriting what we think a successful animal can be. New imaging tools, biomechanical models, and reinterpreted fossils are revealing the hidden engineering behind bodies that once ...
Maria Faith Saligumba
