How harsh nature was millions of years ago (31 photos)

We can only guess about the future; the past is another matter. Fortunately, we have a lot of materials at our disposal that allow us to imagine, down to the smallest detail, what this very past looked like. The members of one cool subreddit, like online paleontologists, are constantly digging through the depths of the Internet in search of images of dinosaurs and other extinct creatures, and here are their most interesting finds.





1. Fossilized crinoid segments can be found in some rivers in Great Britain, and they used to be mistaken for magic coins. They were called "stone stars"



2. In 1982, a comic strip jokingly called the spikes on a stegosaurus' tail a "thagomizer." A paleontologist who read the comic realized that there was no official name for the spines and began using a new word. "Thagomizer" is now a common term





3. "Dogor" - an 18,000-year-old pup discovered in the permafrost of Siberia. He is so well preserved that his nose and mustache are almost completely intact.



4. Artist Tom Bjorklund depicts Neanderthals as humans, not biological specimens.



5. Opal crab claw. Sometimes, under favorable conditions, opal forms a copy of an object buried in sand or clay



6. It's not a fossil, it's a dinosaur mummy



This 110-million-year-old nodosaur was swept out to sea by a flooded river, after which it sank and was pressed into the ocean floor. It is so well preserved that it still has intestines and weighs 2,500 pounds (approximately 1,134 kilograms) of its original 3,000 pounds (1,360 kg).

7. It seems like nothing special, but in fact, these billion-year-old tiny algae are the ancestor of all plants on Earth.



8. Neanderthal with his child. Reconstruction of the Kennis brothers



9. 10 million years ago, turtles could eat you in one bite



10. A dinosaur with two heads, 120-145 million years old, was discovered in Yixiang, China.



11. Woolly mammoth tusk in Siberia



12. Outdated depiction of Neanderthal versus scientifically based reconstruction of Neanderthal



13. Last photograph of a wild Barbary lion, 1924



14. Comparison of the skull of Sarcosuchus and the Nile crocodile



15. Indohyus is the earliest known ancestor of whales



16. Comparison of the sizes of megalodon and humans



17. Bones of a giant Argentinosaurus



18. About 26,000 years ago, this lion cub was left in a Siberian cave by its mother, who either went hunting or was killed. The cub, nicknamed Sparta, died of starvation, and his body was preserved in almost perfect condition



19. Reconstruction of the Tyrannosaurus rex nicknamed Sue at the Field Museum in Chicago



20. Brachiosaurus skeleton



21. Quetzalcoatlus, the largest flying animal!



22. 23 million year old lizard in amber



23. 250 million year old crinoid fossils



24.The first discovered tail of a 99-meter dinosaur. It is perfectly preserved and still covered in feathers



25. Fossilized starfish



26. Titanoboa skeleton



27. The battle between Velociraptor and Protoceratops, preserved in the sand



28. Sue, the largest T. rex found so far - 90% of the skeleton preserved



29. Incredibly well-preserved crinoids fossil dating back approximately 345 million years



30. Megalodon tooth and shark tooth