Prehistoric Animals Scientists Got Horribly Wrong

0:00 Paleontology is a notoriously difficult science. It basically tries to figure out what extinct animals are like just going off of their bones, which sometimes are barely intact, other times hundreds of millions of years old, and many times both of these things. So to say this line of work is hard is an understatement. Therefore, it's not hard to comprehend how paleontologists have made a few mistakes over the years. Many times these errors are rather small and common, like perhaps they slightly exaggerate the size of an animal. However, once in a while, a mistake is made that is neither small nor unimportant, being big enough to change our entire perception of an animal and leaving many scratching their heads, which is nicely demonstrated by these seven creatures. The first example is a rather understandable slip up and was pretty much almost guaranteed to happen as it involves the very first dinosaur

0:46 ever described by paleontologists, the Megalosaurus. This Jurassic therapod was first described all the way back in 1824 when people knew next to nothing about dinosaurs. In fact, at the time, the word dinosaur wasn't even invented yet. And as a result, the first ideas on what Megallosaurus was like were uh let's just say pretty rough. The holotype had consisted of a femur bone, some bits of vertebrae, and part of a lower jaw, which were studied by the English paleontologist William Buckland, who concluded that he had stumbled upon a giant carnivorous lizard, which walked on all fours. Reason being, it was massive, and to him, all massive lizards must walk on all fours, obviously. Additionally, he reckoned that this strange creature was probably amphibious, too, showing more preference for water than land, acting kind of like

1:32 a crocodilian. and he estimated that with flesh it would have measured longer than 40 ft or 12.2 m. But then a rival paleontologist found an even larger dinosaur bone which seemingly caused some insecurities as he really did emphasize the massive part and he soon decided that 40 ft was not nearly big enough for his little not so little lizard and thus he increased his estimate to a whopping 70 ft or 21 m. What's more is that Megalosaurus was discovered during a time when many scientists were still heavily religious and they would often try to reconcile their finds with their beliefs. In this case, Christianity and this particular find was a major problem for Buckland as traditionally it was thought that death and suffering only appeared after Adam and Eve's original sin. But from the bones, it was clear that Megalosaurus

2:18 was a predator, i.e. a killer and one that seemed to him as living before Adam and Eve. And therefore, he came up with a rather interesting solution by stating that Megalosaurus was not a killer, but rather an animal specialized to end the lives of the old and ill in order to lower total suffering and thus preserving the idea of the original sin. And yes, I am serious. And of course, this was a bit off, as was honestly most of his description of the Megalosaurus. And slowly but surely, the true nature of this therapod was revealed. But what's interesting is that the revelations actually came mostly from the discovery of other therapods that were often quite intact, leading to the realization that Megalosaurus was not quadripedal, but rather a biped. And it was not an amphibian, but rather fully

3:04 terrestrial. We've also since come to know that it wasn't as giant as Buckland claimed, being about half the original estimate and weighing just slightly over 1 ton, which was still big for its day, though, and allowed it to be the undisputed apex predator of middle Jurassic England. But it wasn't just Megalosaurus that was misunderstood back in the early days of paleontology. Many dinosaurs ultimately were. But things did get better as time progressed. However, this doesn't mean that mistakes disappeared entirely as they still did happen and still do happen and even with non-dinosaurs as well, including animals that as a whole are still living like spiders. Back in the 1980s, an Argentinian scientist came across a rather peculiar fossil in Argentina's Bajo devel formation, which dated all the way back to the Carboniferous period. It involved a rather large

3:51 carropus, three appendages, and turites, all things you can find in certain groups of animals today, including arthropods. And given just the general shape of the fossil, the paleontologist realized that he must have found an ancient spider. One that threw everything we knew about spiders out the window, as it was a complete monster. measuring 34 cm or 13.3 in long, which is greater than the maximum size seen in the Goliath birdeater, who up until then had held the title the largest spider to ever live. And the timing of this new arachnid made a lot of sense to people as it existed during the Carboniferous period, a time famous for producing giant creepy crawies. And what do you do when you discover the largest spider of all time? Well, you give it a fitting name. And this new fossil was dubbed Megarakn, meaning the great spider. And

4:37 seeing how many of us are scared of spiders, this creature quickly turned into a fan favorite. And the mega soon found itself in museums, documentaries, and even stores. But despite all of its fanfare, there were a few skeptics, as Mega did possess some rather unusual features, even besides its size. For one, its carropus was divided into a front and rear section by a such and it also had a spatulate cheliser, a trait never seen before in other spiders. However, these concerns were swept under the rug with people justifying that these differences were simply because it represented a new order of arachnid or potentially just that it was simply one of a kind. And either way, clarifying its details proved to be difficult, as the holotype had been stored away in a vault for safekeeping, and thus leaving skeptics with only plaster casts to

5:23 study. And so for 25 years it remained how it was until in 2005 that by chance a second specimen was found that had to be a mega as well considering the identicalness of its carropus and appendages. This new fossil was also much more complete which was great news or so you'd think as it instead just caused a lot of headaches. For when they were analyzing the specimen they noticed it tites and appendages were spitting images of those that belong to another extinct genus. Only this genus was not a spider but rather a sea scorpion. To be exact, Megarne was virtually identical in some areas to the woodwward opterus, a permo carbonifpherous ureipid of similar size. And so then it finally dawned upon everyone that all along the world's favorite spider hadn't been a spider at all. Quite the fumble,

6:10 especially seeing that sea scorpions aren't even arachnids. But to be honest, it's not the worst guess as even though sea scorpions aren't arachnids, they're actually not that distantly related as far as extinct animals go. And I mean, the holotype does superficially look like a spider. Kind of. Now, digesting this news of its real identification wasn't exactly the easiest thing, especially for museums, seeing that many of them had paid some pretty good money for giant spider exhibits. And even today, you can still find this creature being represented as one in certain museums because, again, they paid for it. But do you know what is free? Leaving a like and a sub, which honestly really helps the visibility of the video and allows me to make more content for you guys. But anyways, nowadays we imagine the mega was a fairsized uruptrid that lived in an expansive

6:55 freshwater flood plane where it spent its day sifting through substrate with a rake-like arms and feasting on small invertebrates. As opposed to the original belief of prowling dense forests looking for its next meal. And it's not every day we get the whole ecosystem where an animal lived wrong on top of its identity itself. But honestly, I'd argue that Megaraknese's case is not the worst out there. As a better contender yet again evolves a dinosaur, but a much more iconic one than Megalosaurus, the therainosaurus. Thanks to Jurassic World, a lot of people know what this dinosaur looks like from its name alone. I mean, it's kind of hard to forget thanks to those whopping claws. Yet, it wasn't always thought of as the Wolverine dinosaur, nor was it even originally classified as a dinosaur period, but rather a turtle of all things. Now, it makes you wonder

7:42 how we go from this to this. And to understand that, we'll have to travel back to the 1940s when Dino knowledge, while better than the 1800s, was still lacking. At the time, the Soviet Union had been sponsoring many expeditions as they were seeking to increase their scientific prowess with the Gobi Desert being a particular hotbed for exploration due to its high number of fossils. And in 1948, a group had made a huge discovery there. is among a trove of dinosaur and turtle bones. They had located massive claw bones that were unlike anything discovered previously, being literally the largest claws ever found at that point, with each one being some 3 ft or 1 m in length and were located in the same vicinity as the body of a large therapod plus some fragmentaryary ribs and vertebrae of unknown origins. But oddly enough, the

8:29 paleontologists believed that the therapod's body was unrelated to the claws. While for the fragmentaryary bones, they were unsure of who they belonged to. And so with just the massive claws, they were left a bit clueless. However, because the neck formation was home to a large amount of turtles and was composed of many river systems, one scientist, Evan Maliv, came up with a rather interesting idea that these claws had actually belonged to a giant aquatic turtle. One that measured 4.5 m or 15 ft long and weighed over a ton. So definitely quite the sight once you throw in those nails. But thankfully, we were not talking about a killer turtle, as his hypothesis was that this titan had evolved a very specific way of obtaining food, utilizing its massive claws to rake in huge amounts of scrumptious seaweed. And while this turtlely aspect might be news

9:15 to some of you, this strange path to theosaurus isn't exactly hidden. As if you didn't know, its species name to this day, theosaurus coloniformis, means scythe lizard turtle, not dinosaur. Yet, obviously, we know this creature is no turtle. So, what happened? Well, after some time, the bones were re-examined by another paleontologist who noticed that some other extinct animals had very similar claws, albeit many times smaller. However, what was odd to him was that he remarked that the animal with the closest claws weren't turtles, but large therapods, with the paleontologist specifically comparing it to Chilent Tyasaurus, a possible Chinese neovenenator. And thus leading to the new idea that theosaurus was a dinosaur. And sure enough, this was eventually confirmed as other giant claws were

10:00 located, just this time with additional material, which included part of this mysterious dinosaur's legs, arms, and ribs among other parts. And thus cementing its identification as a theropod. Though despite its fame, even to this day, we have some questions as not everyone can agree on how it used its giant claws with ideas ranging from self-defense and digging for food to hooking food, climbing, and even the hypothesis that they held no purpose and were just there for show, relatively speaking. But anyways, at least we know it's not a turtle. But it is fun to imagine animals that are iconic for their appearance in different forms. And it wasn't just theosaurus that this happened to, seeing that it also occurred to an animal even more iconic in some ways, the pterodactylus. Now, while most won't know this genus

10:46 specifically, they'd probably gather it was a terasaur given its name. The group of flying reptiles so iconic to the age of dinosaurs that even people with no interest in paleontology have heard of them. And if you didn't know, it was actually the pterodactylus that the order was named after, seeing that it was the first terasaur to ever be discovered, with the oldest fossils first being found in the late 1700s. In other words, before even dinosaurs were this specific fossil had come from limestone out of Bavaria and was, for all things considered, in quite good shape with most of the body intact, which is almost a miracle for terasaurs, whose light hollow skeletons rarely fossilize well. And yet, despite the completeness of this find, the first scientist to study it, Kosimo Khini, still got a lot wrong, to say the least. Essentially being so weirded out by this

11:32 new creature that he reckoned that it had to be a marine animal, seeing that in his mind, the devs are well known for harboring very freaky creatures, which is kind of true. And because of his assumption, he tried his best to explain how the terasaur's features would have aided in aquatic locomotion, despite kind of being able to tell that it really wasn't adapted for the water at all. But he persevered, and his biggest reasoning ended up being that what seemed to be its wings were in reality large and elongated flippers, that it would flap underwater in order to generate propulsion. He further assumed that it would have been fully aquatic. Yet others thought it was amphibious, splitting its time between land and water, living kind of like a seal. But beyond this, he really couldn't say much and didn't even distinguish if it was a reptile, mammal, or something else. Though ironically, he did specifically

12:17 reject it as having any affinity to bats or birds. Now, because the fossil is quite complete, it didn't actually take long for people to start doubting this aquatic idea. And in the early 1800s, some started pointing out that this new creature had elongated bones to which a wing membrane may have been supported, comparing it to the elongated finger bones we see in bats, and also marking the first time terasaurs were regarded as possibly flying animals. Yet, as you can see by this reconstruction, their vision was still some ways off. However, this image would still prove pivotal as it was sent to another scientist, Gor Kuier, who was fascinated enough by it to take a peek at the fossil and ultimately leading him to officially describe the animal in 1809, giving it a name that roughly means winged finger. a

13:02 fair start, but still mistakes remained with no one agreeing on what it was, with some speculating that it was in fact a bat or some type of animal in between a mammal and a bird, while others like Kuier were unknowingly correct calling it a reptile. This would only be confirmed later on as more specimens of it and other terasaurs were found. But while its flying lifestyle was cleared up much earlier, its original aquatic past would keep haunting it for quite some time. as it wasn't until the 1830s that basically every paleontologist caved in and admitted that pterodactylus and terasaurs in general were flyers, not sea creatures. Though, for what it's worth, it does seem that this group did have some species that were surprisingly good swimmers. And today, we know that pterodactylus was really a rather small terasaur that primarily lived in Jurassic Europe, where it sustained

13:48 itself on small animals. And while the depths were not its home, it did actually like the water, living near highly salinated lagoons where life was rich and abundant. Now, confusing one animal for another can definitely be viewed as a big oopsie by some. But at least it was confused for just one creature, not multiple, which is something that sometimes happens. Case in point, exhibit A, the anomalis. Even today, with everything we know about this guy, it's still seen as an odd creature. I mean, come on, just look at it. And you won't probably be surprised to hear it came out of a very strange time for life, the Cambrian, where it was actually a very important animal, being one of the largest animals of the era and presumably one of Earth's first apex predators. Given both its unusual size for the time and features that indicated a carnivorous diet. But

14:34 when the first fossil was unearthed in 1892, it wasn't known as being an apex predator or even an animal, but rather animals plural. In this case, three. Like many other odd creatures we know of, its holotype came out of the bird's shell in Canada, where researchers originally found a piece of its mouth, multiple front appendages, and a trunk. And obviously, having come from one animal, all three parts were found next to each other. And considering how strange looking this guy is, even when completed, it's not hard to see why the researchers first couldn't tell that these fossils represented not three, but one creature with them instead believing that the trunk represented a new type of sea cucumber, the appendages a shrimp, and the mouth some kind of jellyfish. And funnily enough, originally they were quite confident about their classifications, seeing this to be the

15:20 only logical answer. So imagine their surprise when they started finding more of these fossils in the vicinity, which was obviously confusing because why would a jellyfish, shrimp, and sea cucumber keep hanging out and dying in the same spot? And the answer, well, obviously because it was just one animal. And though I'm sure their guesses were pretty interesting, one anomalis is still much cooler in the end as it is one of the strangest animals known to date, representing a member of the radioodont, who in themselves are an extinct order of stem group arthropods. And as a result, the anomalis is not really a shrimp, jellyfish, or cucumber. But its odd appearance still has kept it tied to one of these animals, as it often being described as looking like a very strange shrimp. And sure enough, it was even given a name meaning the abnormal shrimp. And honestly, it's not

16:06 the worst name considering that radioodontto would at least be a distant cousin to them. And that is definitely held true to the abnormal part of its name. But the anomalis isn't the only animal that was mistaken for multiple, as there is another, a dinosaur that for a long time went down as just about the strangest dino in existence. While most mistakes I mentioned have come from misinterpreting what was found, this mistake occurred with what wasn't found, and has to do with the one-of-a-kind Dinoyus. Like some of the others on this list, Dinoyus is today a hard to miss creature given its strange giant ducklike appearance and of course those frightening arms. But back in the day, it was rather easy to miss as originally only a small fraction of its body was found. Similar to theosaurus, this dinosaur came straight out of the neck formation where it was found after

16:53 researchers stumbled upon some pretty messed up forlims, a shoulder girdle, vertebrae, and some ribs. All of which were of immense proportions. So big, in fact, that at the time they represented the largest arms of any bipeedal animal ever discovered. And uh they also had some pretty metal claws to match. But besides this, nothing else was found, leaving the paleontologist utterly confused and mysticized. Because honestly, who wouldn't be after finding some massive arms and claws in the middle of the desert. And with this little information, all they could report to the world was that back in Cretaceous, there had been a huge dinosaur, presumably a theropod, who roamed about wielding some pretty crazy claws and extraordinarily large arms and hands, which led to its name, Dinoyus, meaning horrible hands. Now, it was by no means the first time that an

17:39 incomplete fossil been found, but rarely has the found fossil been so tantalizing, and more importantly, it's not often that the incompleteness remains for so long. In immediate subsequent excavations, they weren't able to locate any additional materials, and it became something of a legend, being described as one of the most enigmatic, mysterious, and bizarre dinosaurs, eventually even finding itself literally part of a traveling show. And this lasted for decades, during all of which many ideas about what it was were floated around, of which the most captivating and terrifying was that it was a giant carnivorous therapod the size of a T-Rex that undoubtedly terrorized all of the lands. And then another idea posed that it was really just a sloth-like dinosaur who fed on plants and animals that lived in trees. Meanwhile, a third hypothesis claimed it was a Slenderman man-like

18:25 entity in that its arms were supercharged overpowered weapons that allowed it to grab and smash various animals for consumption. Pretty wild. But the bottom line remained the same. No one was sure what it was, and thus many errors were made on it. Finally though, nearly 50 years after its original discovery, researchers caught a break in 2013 when an additional, more complete specimen had been dug up, finally breaking the mysterium around this creature. Yet, as you know by just looking at this thing, its reality was just as strange, for it turned out to be a giant ornithamosaur with a duck-like face, horrific limbs, and a large hump, giving it quite the striking appearance. And though it still looks a bit unnerving, it has turned out that despite the presence of large claws, Dinoyus is something of a gentle giant,

19:10 seeing that its nails were actually blunt, leading to the idea that they were used to dig and gather plants, not kill animals. Furthermore, its skull was more specialized for eating vegetation, not meat. But at the same time, one specimen found later on did contain fish scales within its stomach region, creating the new assumption that this dinosaur is an omnivore and a big one at that. And it's now regarded as the largest ornithamosaur ever. And even among the largest therapods, period, with specimens measuring 11 m or 36 ft long and weighing 6.5 tons, with some people even thinking it cracked 10 tons in certain cases. So, as you can tell by now, paleontology is not perfect, and fossil finds can lead to mistakes, especially if they are lacking or sufficiently confused whoever found

19:56 them. But sometimes we also make mistakes when we don't find fossils. In fact, there's a whole term that kind of describes this, Lazarus taxa, which simply put occurs when an animal disappears and then reappears in the fossil record, causing some confusion, with perhaps the most striking case of this involving a fish, one that's actually still alive. And yes, this does deviate from the whole extinct animal thing, but I think it's an interesting story and still relevant as the whole problem stems from the fact that we thought it was extinct and for 66 million years at that. In the 18th century, paleontologists started to unearth a brand new kind of fish in various formations. The first specimen came out of Europe and was dated all the way back to the late Perian, so over 250 million years ago. It was a medium-sized fish, one which they believe represented

20:41 an entire new group, which they called the celacants. Now, this original specimen wasn't the most interesting to look at, but it did catch the attention of some researchers given one, its extreme age, and two, because it seemed to represent a transitional species between fish and tetropods. And what they also noted was that this fish seemed to have managed to survive for a very long time. as others belonging to this group were also found in Deonian formations, Jurassic ones, and so on. And while the public wasn't super engaged in these new finds, some did draw a bit of attention, like the Jurassic Mosonia, a giant fish, which could measure 5.3 m or 17.4 ft in length and either fed on hardshelled prey or any animal that could be suctioned up. And this behemoth along with the rest

21:27 were seemingly a common part of prehistoric life. But then all of a sudden, they abruptly disappeared. And at an interesting point too, 66 million years ago, right when the KT extinction event had occurred, which was seemingly clear evidence that silicans and non-avian dinosaurs shared the same fate. But then something crazy happened. In 1938, off the east coast of South Africa, local fishermen had been well fishing. And after a hard day of work, they returned to shore where the boss of the fisherman ringed up a museum curator, saying that his men had caught a lot of things that would make for good museum exhibits. And so the curator drove out to take a look at the pile, which consisted mainly of sharks. But among the fish, she noticed a strange blue fin. And as she grabbed and pulled it, she revealed a relatively large 5-

22:13 ft or 1.5 m long fish, which was unlike anything she had ever seen, and really anything the fisherman had ever seen either, with him, stating that in the 30 years of work, none had come across a fish like it. And so sensing that it was significant, she bagged it and wrote a letter to a well seasoned scientist describing her find, stating that the fish was coated in heavy scales, almost armor-like in fact, while the fins resembled limbs and were scaled right up to a fringe of filament. And then beside the description, she also included a drawing. Then almost 2 weeks later, the recipient JLB Smith finally saw the sketch and essentially did the paleontologist version of pooping his pants. As to him, it resembled not a living fish, but a prehistoric one. But he calmed himself and tried not to get too excited, instead just telling her in

22:58 all caps to preserve what she could. Eventually, she was also able to send him some small scale samples, which to him confirmed his wildest dreams. It was a cilacanth, an animal presumably dead for 66 million years, which now had seemingly come back from extinction. And when he finally got to see the specimen in person, he recalled a sensation of being hit by a white hot blast that just made him feel shaky and happy with his whole body tingling in afterglow. Kind of odd, but maybe makes sense for paleontologists as what stood before him was no doubt a celacanth now known as Latimeia. Unsurprisingly, this was an international sensation and triggered numerous expeditions which not only found more specimens but also a second kind and together they're colloally known as the West Indian Ocean and Indonesians.

23:44 Like some of their ancient relatives, living cilacants can get quite big, clocking in at 2 m or 6.6 ft and weighing around 90 kg or 200 lb. And then on top of this, they also live for extended periods of time, even up to 100 years. And because of course they're still living, we did end up getting to better study them, even sequencing their genome, leading scientists to discover that opposed to the original belief that celicants might be the youngest diverging non-tetropod sarcopterigian, that title actually goes to lungfish. And surprisingly, or perhaps unsurprisingly, if you understand how evolution works, they also found that celacants were still evolving to this day. Though superficially they do resemble their ancestors quite a bit, especially considering their hundreds of millions of years of existence. But honestly, it might not be that

24:30 surprising that creatures like the silicans still exist in our oceans, especially considering that we humans have barely explored 20% of it. And of the 20% that we have explored, we have come across some absolutely crazy animals. Animals which I've covered in a video on my other channel, Living Zoo. So, if you're interested in hearing about the giants found in the deepest parts of our oceans, go check that video out. Link will be somewhere here, I guess. Anyways, thanks for watching and until next time on Extinct Zoo.