Ancient World Review

Did Humans Live Alongside The Giant Ripper Lizard Of Prehistoric Australia?

Note: "The prehistory of Australia is the period between the first human habitation of the Australian continent and the colonization of Australia in 1788 which marks the start of consistent documentation of Australia. This period is estimated to have lasted between 40,000 and 60,000 years." Source: Wikipedia.

This means that the first humans who settled in Australia may have encountered Megalania, a huge predatory monitor lizard thought to have disappeared about 50,000 years ago. Also known as the "giant ripper lizard," the Megalania "could easily have caught prey of twice its own weight, and could have tackled animals of up to 10 times its own weight," according to the BBC (2011). Growing up to 23 feet long and weighing over a thousand pounds, "a fully grown giant ripper lizard would be able to tackle even the largest Diprotodon. Aboriginal humans armed with little more than wooden spears would have had little chance against one of these predators.

It would be interesting to find out if some of the legends of the Australian aborigines could be traced back to early encounters with the Megalania. It's probably impossible to know, but Aboriginal mythology is full of creatures said to lurk in "swamps, billabongs [seasonal river channels], creeks, riverbeds, and waterholes." The Aborigines have at least two lizard deities: Adnoartina, the lizard guard of Uluru, and Mangar-kunjer-kunja, a lizard god who is thought to have created humans, but they hold protective and generative roles. If it's remembered at all, I'm guessing that Megalania would appear in Aboriginal legends as some kind of mythological monster.

Giant Prehistoric Bird Ate Neanderthal Child's Bones

"One Neanderthal child had a very bad day about 115,000 years ago. The child died — that much is certain — and the bones were gulped down and digested by a giant, prehistoric bird, according to archaeologists in Poland." Source: Live Science.

"However, it's unclear whether the giant bird killed the child before the gruesome feast or whether the child died from another cause before the bird scavenged the remains, the archaeologists said."

Note: The bones, discovered in Ciemna Cave, one of several caves in Ojcow National Park in Poland, are "the oldest known human remains ever to be found in Poland." The bird that ate the child's bones isn't identified, which is too bad. I've got this picture of a Neanderthal kid wandering off from its cave and getting gobbled up by a huge terror bird, but the terror birds, unfortunately, lived in South America during a different time period.

Related: 10 Dangerous Prehistoric Birds.

Extinct Cave Lions Discovered In Siberia

Report from 2015.

"In 2015, the frozen remains of two newborn P. spelaea cubs were found by researchers in Pleistocene-age permafrost in the Russian republic of Yakutia, Eastern Siberia. A third youngster was discovered in the same region in 2017, during mining works. The three small cubs were preserved in such pristine condition that scientists brought de-extinction [1] talks to the table." Source: The Vintage News (2018). More information here.

[1] De-extinction, aka resurrection biology or species revivalism, is a proposed process for bringing back extinct species or reviving endangered species, usually by cloning.

According to Wikipedia, the two cubs unearthed in 2015, "estimated to be between 25,000 and 55,000 years old, were discovered close to the Uyandina River in Yakutia, Siberia in permafrost. Research results indicate that the cubs were likely barely a week old at the time of their deaths, as their milk teeth had not fully erupted. Further evidence shows the cubs were hidden at a den site until they were old enough to join the pride. Researchers think that the cubs were trapped and killed by a landslide, and that without air, the cubs were preserved in such good condition. A second expedition to the site where the cubs were found was planned for 2016, in hopes of finding either the remains of a third cub or possibly the cubs' mother."

A third well-preserved cave lion cub was discovered at a different location in 2017. According to the Siberian Times (Nov. 2017), "[t]he prehistoric animal was found in permafrost on the bank of Tirekhtykh River of the Abyisky district of Yakutia by a local resident Boris Berezhnov." The remains, thought to be around 50,000 years old, are also so well-preserved that there has been talk of trying to clone the animal.

Note: Chirpy pop-science presenters are an abomination.

One part of the story which is missing from most of the mass media reports is that the third "cave lion cub" may not be a cave lion after all:

"A Russian man hunting for mammoth tusks in Eastern Siberia made an unexpected discovery in September: the incredibly furry, slightly squished mummy of a cat from the last ice age. Scientists are celebrating the rare discovery, but they're not certain on one major point — whether the mummy is a cave lion cub or a lynx kitten, paleontologists told Live Science." Source: Live Science (2017). It's possible that the cub is a prehistoric Eurasian lynx. I'm not sure where the question stands as of Oct. 2018.

Cloning these cave lions or lynxes or whatever they were probably isn't possible, at least in the foreseeable future, according to several experts quoted by Live Science.

Wyoming's Natural Trap Cave

"North American lions [1], cheetahs and short-faced bears: Those are just a few fearsome critters from 25,000 years ago paleontologists already might have found in their first excavation of a bizarre northern Wyoming cave in 30 years." Source: CBS News (2014).

[1] According to National Geographic (2010), the "American lion" may not be a lion at all, but a kind of jaguar.

"The only way in or out of Natural Trap Cave is a 15-foot-wide hole in the ground that's almost impossible to see until you're next to it. Over tens of thousands of years, several thousand insufficiently wary animals plummeted more than 80 feet into the chilly, dim, cathedral-like cavern." (CBS News)

Excavations in the cave were carried out back in the 1970s and 1980s, followed by a period of inactivity until 2014. A later expedition (2016) discovered a new type of wolf in the cave: "A wolf with stronger jaws, an appetite for megafauna, and one that paleontologists never expected to find so far south. according to Scientific American (2016). Until this discovery, "the wolves of the Wyoming boneyard were categorized as either gray wolves or dire wolves."

In 2015, the Billings Gazette reported that "In addition to the American lion, the team has discovered bones from camels, the American cheetah and a tiny fragment of a mammoth’s tooth in the past two years. They also found remains from wolves, weasels, foxes, bighorn sheep, pronghorn and many horses."

Next video report is from 2014 and features a typically stupid intro.

"Scientists doubt that humans played a role in forcing wildlife into Natural Trap Cave. The bell-shaped cave, nearly impossible for humans to safely enter and exit, never yielded any evidence of human occupations. Scientists believe instead that the cave was located within a major wildlife migratory corridor. The cave is closed to protect paleontological resources." Source: National Park Service.

Comment: I'm probably suffering from a bad case of romantic primitivism, but I'd love to be able to go back in time to prehistoric North America when it was still a wilderness populated by jaguars, mammoths, dire wolves and short-faced bears. Of course, if I accidentally stumbled into a time portal and found myself stranded in Wyoming 20,000 years ago, I'd probably starve to death in a couple of weeks or end up getting eaten myself, but it might be worth it just to catch a glimpse of the country before it was overrun by strip-malls and thumb-typing Ipod zombies.

Killers Like Us: Chimpanzees

"In the early 1960's, when Dr. Jane Goodall began her now famous study of the chimpanzees of Gombe National Park, Tanzania, it was thought that chimpanzees were strictly vegetarian. In fact, when Goodall first reported this behavior, many people were skeptical and claimed that meat was not a natural part of the chimpanzee diet. Today, hunting by chimpanzees at Gombe has been well documented ... and hunting has also been observed at most other sites in Africa where chimpanzees have been studied ... At Gombe, we now know that chimpanzees may kill and eat more than 150 small and medium sized animals such as monkeys, wild pigs and small antelopes each year." Source: University of Southern California.

"The chimpanzee and another ape, the bonobo, are humans' closest living relatives," according to the American Museum of Natural History. Chimpanzees, it would seem, are inherently violent, though some argue that chimpanzee violence is the result of human interference:

"Of all of the world's species, humans and chimpanzees are some of the only to engage in coordinated attacks on other members of their same species. Jane Goodall was among the first to introduce the occurrence of lethal inter-community killings and since then primatologists and anthropologists have long debated the concept of warfare in this genus. Research theories have pointed to increased gains and benefits of killing off competitors and opening up increased access to key resources such as food or mates. In contrast, others have argued that warfare is a result of human impact on chimpanzees, such as habitat destruction or food provisioning, rather than adaptive strategies." Source: Archaeology News Network (2014).

Even if chimpanzee warfare is caused by human impact, the fact that chimpanzees are capable of coordinated attacks on each other suggests that this kind of violence is somehow inherent in their nature.

Ancient Hyena "Chomped Down" On Neanderthal's Face?

"About 65,000 years ago, a large carnivore — perhaps a cave hyena — chomped down on the face of a (likely dead) Neanderthal. Then, that carnivore partially digested two of the hominin's teeth before regurgitating them, a new study suggests." Source: Live Science.

The Paleoart of Mauricio Anton

"Mauricio Antón Ortuzar (born 1961 in Bilbao, Spain) is a paleoartist and illustrator specialized in the scientific reconstruction of extinct life, well known for his influential paintings of hominids, extinct carnivores and other vertebrate fossil groups. His works illustrate a great number of books, scientific papers, private collections and museums in many parts of the world. He currently works in association with the Natural Science Museum in Madrid. " Source: Wikipedia.

The official site of paleoartist Mauricio Anton.

Entelodon - The Hell Pig

Notes: "Entelodon, meaning 'Perfect-Toothed," was a large ancestor of hoofed animals (mainly pigs). It could grow up to two meters tall, about the size of a rhino, and weighed up to one tonne. Entelodon has been described as the 'pig from hell'. They were aggressive, and could easily fight off many predators." Source: Dinopedia.

Comment: The Entelodon (or Entelodont depending on the source) has to be the scariest mammalian carnivore I've ever read about. After all, we're talking about a killer pig almost as big as a human and weighing up to a ton, and this monster would apparently eat just about anything. Luckily for early humans, predators like this died out long before our ancestors came along. They would have had to deal with wild boars, however. They're unpredictable and vicious and fossils of boars dating back to the Last Ice Age have been found all over Europe.

Image from Prehistoric Wildlife.

Peru's Prehistoric Crocodile Hotspot

"... the Iquitos bonebeds ... have yielded seven different species of prehistoric crocodylians. The crocs range from stout-snouted monsters to long-jawed fish snatchers and blunt-toothed caimans, and five of the species drawn from the bonebeds have never been seen before. The question facing the paleontologists is why so many different species were present in the same place at the same time." Source: National Geographic.

Note: This "croc hotspot" dates to around 13 million years ago.

Australia The First Four Billion Years - Strange Creatures