RED-LIPPED BATFISH: THE FISH THAT WALKED INTO A BEAUTY SALON

Somewhere in the waters around the Galápagos Islands lives a fish that appears to have applied an enthusiastic coat of bright red lipstick, put on its grumpiest expression and decided that swimming is entirely overrated.

Meet the red-lipped batfish, Ogcocephalus darwini.

With its spectacular scarlet pout, flattened body and decidedly unconventional approach to getting around, this little marine oddity looks rather like a pancake that has made some questionable fashion choices.

And I absolutely adore it.

A FISH WITH LEGS? WELL, SORT OF.

Unlike most fish, which propel themselves gracefully through the water, the red-lipped batfish spends much of its time moving about the seafloor using modified pectoral and pelvic fins.

It doesn't have actual legs, of course, but those sturdy, limb-like fins allow it to shuffle, crawl and occasionally perform what can only be described as a rather awkward underwater stroll.

Imagine a tiny, disgruntled gentleman in a red-lipped disguise making his way across the ocean floor.

That is essentially our batfish.

Red-lipped batfish are generally found around the Galápagos Islands and nearby waters off the Pacific coast of South America. They are bottom-dwelling marine fish, often encountered on sandy or rocky seafloors.

They grow to roughly 20 centimetres in length, so despite their rather dramatic appearance, they are not particularly large.

What they lack in size, they more than make up for in personality. Or at least the appearance of personality. Scientists have yet to establish whether batfish are actually judging us.

THE LIPSTICK QUESTION

Why those extraordinary red lips?

The short answer is that we don't know for certain.

One suggestion is that their bright lips may play a role in recognising other members of their species or communicating during courtship. But this remains a hypothesis rather than an established scientific fact.

Perhaps they are advertising their availability to other batfish.

Perhaps they simply enjoy looking fabulous.

Either way, nature has produced a creature that looks permanently ready for a night out while simultaneously appearing deeply disappointed by everyone at the party.

A FISH THAT GOES FISHING

Now things get even stranger.

Our red-lipped friend belongs to the anglerfish order, Lophiiformes, a remarkable group of fishes famous for their unusual methods of catching prey.

Like other anglerfish, batfish possess a modified dorsal-fin spine called an illicium, which functions rather like a miniature fishing rod.

In batfishes, this apparatus is tucked into a cavity near the snout and bears a fleshy lure called an esca. Rather than relying on the glowing lure made famous by some deep-sea anglerfish, batfish use a non-luminous lure associated with chemical attraction.

This helps bring curious prey within striking distance.

Their menu includes small fishes and marine invertebrates, including crustaceans and worms.

Imagine spending your day wandering around the seafloor wearing bright lipstick, occasionally producing a fishing rod from your face.

Evolution really does have a marvellous sense of humour.

WHO ARE THEIR RELATIVES?

The red-lipped batfish belongs to the family Ogcocephalidae, commonly known as the batfishes.

Its relatives include other wonderfully peculiar bottom-dwelling species with flattened bodies, arm-like fins and extraordinary faces.

But the wider family reunion is even more entertaining.

As members of the anglerfish order Lophiiformes, batfishes are related to frogfishes, monkfishes and the famous deep-sea anglerfishes.

Frogfishes are particularly entertaining cousins. Many are masters of camouflage, resembling sponges, corals or algae, and some also use their fins to walk along the seafloor.

Monkfishes, meanwhile, possess enormous mouths and an impressive ability to swallow prey.

And then there are the deep-sea anglerfishes, some of which dangle glowing lures in the darkness to attract unsuspecting dinner guests.

It's quite the family gathering.

One cousin walks, another glows in the dark, and our Galápagos beauty turns up wearing lipstick.

WHERE DO BATFISH APPEAR IN THE FOSSIL RECORD?

This is where our journey takes us into deep time.

Although the red-lipped batfish is a living species, we do not currently have a well-established fossil record specifically documenting Ogcocephalus darwini.

And that distinction matters.

The fossil record of its broader anglerfish relatives, however, reaches back tens of millions of years.

Some of the earliest well-known fossil anglerfishes come from the Eocene Epoch, approximately 50 million years ago.

Among these ancient relatives is Histionotophorus bassani, an extinct anglerfish known from the famous Eocene fossil deposits of Monte Bolca in northern Italy.

These extraordinary deposits preserve an ancient marine ecosystem filled with beautifully detailed fossil fishes.

Another fossil anglerfish, Caruso brachysomus, is known from the Eocene of Monte Bolca and provides another fascinating glimpse into the early evolutionary history of this unusual group.

These fossils are not red-lipped batfish, nor are they necessarily their direct ancestors. Instead, they help document the early history of the broader anglerfish lineage.

The batfish family itself has a much patchier fossil record, making the precise history of its distinctive walking adaptations difficult to reconstruct.

This is one of the challenges palaeontologists face when studying animals that live in marine environments where fossil preservation can be rare or incomplete.

An absence of fossils does not mean an animal's ancestors were absent. It means we have not yet found the evidence to tell their complete story.

And somewhere in the rocks, there may still be an extraordinary fossil batfish waiting to be discovered.

Preferably with its lipstick intact.

FIVE MORE REASONS TO LOVE THIS PECULIAR FISH

1. It is named for Darwin. Its scientific name, Ogcocephalus darwini, honours Charles Darwin, whose observations in the Galápagos helped shape our understanding of evolution. Darwin did not, however, personally name this fish.

2. Its walking fins are still fins. Those remarkable appendages are modified versions of the paired fins found in other fishes, not the same kind of limbs that allow mammals and reptiles to walk on land.

3. It has a built-in fishing apparatus. Its lure is part of a modified dorsal fin, a wonderful example of how evolution can repurpose existing anatomical structures.

4. It is not the only batfish with a memorable face. Other members of the batfish family have flattened, angular bodies and expressions that range from mildly surprised to thoroughly unimpressed.

5. It reminds us that evolution doesn't work towards a single ideal body shape. Natural selection favours traits that help organisms survive and reproduce in their environments. Sometimes that produces a swift, streamlined swimmer. Sometimes it produces a bottom-dwelling fish with a fishing rod on its head and bright red lips.

A FINAL KISS FROM DEEP TIME

The red-lipped batfish reminds us that the natural world is infinitely more inventive than we could ever imagine.

Here is a fish that has traded elegant swimming for an awkward stroll, developed its own fishing equipment and acquired a face that looks ready for the red carpet.

Its broader evolutionary family stretches back at least to the Eocene fossil record, connecting this extraordinary modern animal with ancient marine ecosystems and millions of years of evolutionary experimentation.

And while we have yet to uncover a convincing fossil record of the red-lipped batfish itself, its living relatives and ancient cousins offer tantalising clues to a much older story.

For me, that is one of the great joys of palaeontology.

Every living creature carries an evolutionary history, whether we can see that history in the rocks or not.

Some of those stories involve mighty dinosaurs, enormous marine reptiles and towering prehistoric forests.

And some involve a little fish wandering around the Pacific seafloor looking as though it has just been stood up on a first date.

Keep exploring, fossil friends.

The ancient world — and its wonderfully strange living descendants — never cease to surprise us.

CRINOIDS: ANCIENT SEA LILIES

Picture a meadow beneath an ancient sea. Slender stalks rise from the bottom, each carrying a delicate crown of branching arms. The current moves through them, bringing a steady supply of drifting food.

At first glance, you might mistake them for flowers.

These beautiful creatures are crinoids, often called sea lilies. Despite their botanical appearance, they are animals—marine relatives of sea stars, brittle stars, sea urchins and sea cucumbers.

Their fossils preserve something wonderful: the remains of an underwater garden whose “flowers” were feeding.

A FLOWER WITH FEEDING ARMS

A typical stalked crinoid has a surprisingly elegant body plan.

At its base, an attachment structure anchors the animal. Above it rises a flexible column supporting a small, plated cup called the calyx. Branching arms spread from the top, forming the feeding crown.

The stalk lifts those arms into passing currents. Different species grow to different heights, allowing neighbouring animals to gather food at different levels above the seabed.

In dense communities, their crowns create a layered underwater landscape, with smaller creatures living among and beneath them.

This is a garden sustained by moving water.

HOW DOES A SEA LILY EAT?

A crinoid’s feathery arms are food collectors.

Tiny tube feet along the arms capture suspended particles. These morsels pass into food grooves and travel towards the mouth, which faces upwards within the crown.

The current delivers dinner.

Branching arms and their smaller side branches increase the collecting area, creating an intricate living filter. What looks like a delicate ornament is a remarkably effective feeding system.

LITTLE STONE BEADS

You are much more likely to encounter a piece of crinoid stem than a complete animal.

The skeleton consists of many calcite plates. In the stalk, these plates are stacked together like a column of tiny discs. Each stem segment is called a columnal.

After death, the tissues holding the skeleton together decay. Arms scatter, stems separate and the animal comes apart into a multitude of pieces.

Look closely at fossil-bearing limestone and you may notice small circles, rings or stars. Some resemble miniature washers. Others remain joined in short stacks.

These are fragments of animals that once stood above the seafloor.

Their abundance can be extraordinary. In some deposits, crinoid debris forms a substantial part of the limestone itself.

A complete fossil, with its crown and stem still connected, records a much rarer event: burial before that delicate skeleton could fall apart.

VANCOUVER ISLAND’S ANCIENT UNDERWATER MEADOWS

One of the loveliest places to imagine this vanished world is high in the mountains of Vancouver Island.

At Marble Meadows in Strathcona Provincial Park, limestone of the Buttle Lake Group preserves evidence of ancient marine communities.

During the Permian Period, long before these rocks became part of a mountain landscape, carbonate sediments accumulated on a shallow submarine platform. Crinoids lived alongside brachiopods, bryozoans and corals.

Their broken skeletons contributed to the limestone we see today.

The contrast is delicious: alpine meadows above, the remains of marine meadows below.

What is now rock beneath mountain air once lay beneath seawater. Subsequent geological movement and uplift, followed by erosion, brought that ancient seabed into view.

The fossils belong to the park’s natural heritage. Photograph them, enjoy their details and leave them in place for the next curious visitor.

SEA LILIES ARE STILL WITH US

Crinoids survived far beyond the ancient seas preserved in limestone.

Living members include stalked sea lilies and feather stars, whose adults lack a long stalk. Some feather stars can crawl or swim using their arms.

Watching one move is a lovely way to undo the illusion that these creatures are plants.

Modern crinoids also help palaeontologists interpret their fossil relatives. Their feeding, movement and anatomy offer clues to lives recorded only in stone.

ANTLERS, ANCESTORS AND A CERTAIN MUSKY MAJESTY: ELK

The elk you see here, Cervus canadensis, belongs to a lineage stretching deep into the Pleistocene—a time when ice sheets advanced and retreated across much of North America, reshaping landscapes and every living thing within them.

Elk are members of the family Cervidae, a group that first appeared in the fossil record during the Early Miocene, roughly 20 million years ago. 

These early deer were generally small, forest-dwelling creatures whose simple antlers bore little resemblance to the magnificent branching crowns carried by their modern kin.

By the Late Miocene and into the Pliocene, cervids had begun to diversify in both form and habitat. 

As forests shifted and grasslands expanded, deer evolved longer limbs, new feeding strategies and increasingly elaborate antlers—those extraordinary seasonal crowns of bone used for display, intimidation and, when diplomacy fails, combat.

The genus Cervus, which includes modern elk, appeared later in Eurasia. Its descendants eventually spread into North America through Beringia, the land bridge that connected Siberia and Alaska during periods of lower sea level in the Pleistocene.

Once here, elk flourished.

Roosevelt elk, Cervus canadensis roosevelti

Pleistocene deposits across North America—from the tar seeps of Rancho La Brea in California (so worth a visit) to river gravels, caves and northern permafrost—preserve elk bones alongside an astonishing Ice Age cast: mammoths, mastodons, ancient bison, dire wolves, sabre-toothed cats and short-faced bears.

It was a formidable neighbourhood, yet elk held their own. 

As adaptable grazers and browsers, they could feed on grasses, sedges, leaves, twigs, bark and shrubs, allowing them to navigate shifting climates and rapidly changing ecosystems.

Here on Vancouver Island, the elk we encounter are Roosevelt elk, Cervus canadensis roosevelti—the largest-bodied of North America’s living elk subspecies.

And they are magnificent.

Big, breathtaking and completely at home in the rainforest, they emerge from the trees to browse in clearings, drink along the shores of Cowichan Lake and, with alarming regularity, appear beside island roadways looking as though they have somewhere important to be.

Elk Enjoying Nature's Salad Bar

Older scientific literature may list them as Cervus elaphus roosevelti, reflecting the long-running debate over whether North American elk should be classified with Eurasian red deer. 

Today, they are generally recognized as a subspecies of the distinct North American elk, Cervus canadensis.

Roosevelt elk are native to the wet coastal forests extending from northern California through Oregon and Washington into southwestern British Columbia. 

In Canada, their great natural stronghold is Vancouver Island, with smaller populations now living along portions of the southwest mainland coast. 

Several of those mainland herds descend from animals moved from Vancouver Island as part of successful restoration efforts.

Their ancestors reached Vancouver Island following the last glaciation, entering newly available landscapes as the ice retreated and forests, river valleys, wetlands and coastal meadows developed. Over time, they became superbly adapted to life in the temperate rainforest.

Elk near Cowichan Lake. PM Photography

Unlike elk associated with the open grasslands and mountain valleys of the continental interior, Roosevelt elk often live beneath towering western redcedar, Douglas-fir, Sitka spruce and western hemlock. 

They favour low-elevation river valleys, estuaries, wetlands, forest openings and avalanche tracks where grasses, sedges, shrubs and tender young vegetation are plentiful.

Many herds move into higher country during summer, then descend into sheltered valleys as autumn storms and winter snow return. 

They are also regulars along Vancouver Island’s highways, where lush roadside vegetation apparently offers an irresistible salad bar. Unfortunately, their fondness for roadside dining sometimes ends very poorly—for elk and motorists alike. 

If you find yourself driving along Highway 18 (also known as the Cowichan Valley Highway) slow right down at any sign of movement along the roadside. 

April through June, look for wee fawns and the rest of the year, be prepared for a herd of Elk to emerge—especially within the vicinity of Youbou, British Columbia. Tis a favourite haunt of our Cervus locals.

Their dark coats seem almost made for the island’s rain-soaked forests. A mature bull can appear suddenly between the trees, his body blending into the shadows while his pale rump patch flashes through the undergrowth. He is massive, deep-chested and thick-necked, particularly during the autumn rut.

His antlers rise above the sword ferns like the branches of some highly mobile and faintly irritated tree.

To encounter one in the wild is unforgettable. The elk here have most definitely been enjoying the salad bar and look remarkably well nourished. They also appear wonderfully unconcerned by the human standing nearby, staring open-mouthed into the forest.

The woods may be dripping after rain, rich with the scents of cedar, wet earth and decaying leaves. Then comes the soft crack of a branch. A dark shape moves between the trunks, followed by another, until an entire herd materializes from the forest.

For a few moments, you simply stand and stare.

They are so perfectly at home they seem less like animals passing through the landscape than living pieces of the landscape itself. Their breath hangs in the cool air. Hooves press deeply into the saturated soil. Cows murmur softly to their calves while bulls watch from the edge of the herd, carrying an astonishing architecture of bone upon their heads.

And then the breeze turns.

Roosevelt elk possess the same earthy, musky scent as their continental relatives, enhanced during the rut by wallowing, urine-soaked vegetation and the general romantic conviction that smelling respectable is wildly overrated. The result is a potent mixture of wet hide, mud, fermented vegetation and eau de amorous ungulate.

It is not exactly Chanel No. 5, but the cows appear to approve.

On Vancouver Island, Roosevelt elk share the landscape with Columbian black-tailed deer, black bears, cougars and wolves that are more than capable of hunting them. Elk also help shape the ecosystems around them. Their grazing and browsing influence plant communities, while their movements open pathways, disperse seeds and carry nutrients through forests, wetlands and river valleys.

They are residents of these ecosystems and active participants in them.

Although elk survived the great wave of extinctions at the end of the Pleistocene, Roosevelt elk have faced more recent pressures from intensive hunting, expanding settlement, road traffic and the loss and fragmentation of low-elevation habitat.

Their Vancouver Island populations are therefore particularly important. They represent both a distinctive coastal form of elk and a living continuation of the great cervid migrations that followed the retreating Ice Age.

When a Roosevelt bull bugles through a misty Vancouver Island valley, the sound seems to belong to another time. It rises through the rain and cedar branches—wild, strange and resonant—carrying with it an echo of the Pleistocene.

Magnificent, ancient and, dare I say, magnificently smelly.

BARNACLES: CUVIER TO DARWIN

Barnacles All Closed Up

One of the most interesting and enigmatic little critters we find at the seashore are barnacles. 

They cling to rocks at the waters' edge, closed to our curiosity, their domed mounds like little closed beaks shut to the water and the world.

They choose their permanent homes as larvae, sticking to hard substrates that will become their permanent homes for the rest of their lives. 

It has taken us a long time to find how they actually stick or what kind of "glue" they were using.

A clever fellow from Duke University's Marine Laboratory in Durhan, North Carolina finally cracked that puzzle. Instead of chopping up barnacles to see what makes them stick, he observed and collected the oozing glue from some Amphibalanus amphitrite as they secreted it.

Remarkably, the barnacle glue sticks to rocks in a similar way to how red cells bind together. Red blood cells bind and clot with a little help from some enzymes. 

These work to create long protein fibres that first blind, clot then form a scab. The mechanism barnacles use, right down to the enzyme, is very similar. That's especially interesting as about a billion years separate our evolutionary path from theirs.

So, with the help of their clever enzymes, they can affix to most anything – ship hulls, rocks, and even the skin of whales. If you find them in tidepools, you begin to see their true nature as they open up, their delicate feathery finger-like projections flowing back and forth in the surf.

Barnacle Cirri Seeking Tasty Plankton

Those wee feather-like bits you see are called cirri. Eight pairs of these thoracic limbs help barnacles to filter tasty bits of plankton from the surrounding water into their mouths.

Barnacles are cirripedes, a kind of crustacean that is covered with hard plates of calcium carbonate. Named for their cirri, they live stuck to hard surfaces in and around our world's oceans. 

While they do not look like crustaceans, they are definitely part of this taxonomic grouping that includes crab, lobster, crayfish, prawn, krill, and woodlice.

BARNACLES IN KWAK'WALA

In the Kwak̓wala language of the Kwakwaka'wakw, speakers of Kwak'wala, of the Pacific Northwest, barnacles are known as k̕wit̕a̱'a and broken barnacle shells are known as t̕sut̕su'ma.

BARNACLES IN THE FOSSIL RECORD

They have an old history. Their ancestors can be traced back to animals such as Priscansermarinus that lived during the Middle Cambrian – some 510 to 500 million years ago. I found my first barnacle fossil at a fossil site called Muir Creek on the south end of Vancouver Island. 

The wonderfully accessible foreshore fossil exposures at Muir are Oligocene, 20-25 million years old. This is about the time that barnacles can be found more readily as skeletal remains.

One of the reasons for the limited number of barnacle remains in the fossil record is their preferred habitat – high energy, shallow ocean environments. These tend to see a lot of tidal action that leads to erosion and barnacles being broken apart, slowly eroded down to bits too small to recognize for what they are.

One of the fossil remains we do find are not the barnacles themselves, but trace fossils of acrothoracican barnacle borings from Rogerella. These are commonly found in the fossil record beginning in the Devonian right up to today. Rogerella is a small pouch-shaped boring (a type of trace fossil) with a slit-like aperture currently produced by acrothoracican barnacles. 

These crustaceans extrude their legs upwards through the opening for filter-feeding (Seilacher, 1969; Lambers and Boekschoten, 1986). They are known in the fossil record as borings in carbonate substrates (shells and hardgrounds) from the Devonian to the Recent (Taylor and Wilson, 2003).

Barnacle Ancestry Goes Back to the Middle Cambrian

FROM MOLLUSCA TO ARTICULATA

For those of you who enjoy leaning into the geeky history of how we came to understand barnacles, I shall indulge you.

Barnacles were originally classified by Linnaeus and Cuvier as Mollusca, but in 1830 John Vaughan Thompson published observations showing the metamorphosis of the nauplius and cypris larvae into adult barnacles. He noted how these larvae were similar to those of crustaceans.

In 1834 Hermann Burmeister published further information, reinterpreting these findings. The effect was to move barnacles from the phylum of Mollusca to Articulata, showing naturalists that detailed study was needed to reevaluate their taxonomy.

Charles Darwin took up this challenge in 1846 and developed his initial interest in a major study published as a series of monographs in 1851 and 1854. Darwin undertook this study, at the suggestion of his friend Joseph Dalton Hooker, to thoroughly understand at least one species before making the generalizations needed for his theory of evolution by natural selection.

BARNACLES IN A NUT SHELL

Barnacles live life with unwavering commitment. Once they find the perfect spot on a rock, pier, whale, ship's hull, or unsuspecting sea turtle, they glue themselves down with one of the strongest natural cements known and settle in for good. There are no second thoughts, no moving to a nicer neighbourhood with a better view. Home is home.

These remarkable little crustaceans are suspension feeders, rhythmically sweeping tiny morsels of plankton and organic debris into their mouths using feathery, jointed legs called cirri. Those waving "feet" you see flicking through the water are actually highly specialized feeding appendages, tirelessly combing the sea for dinner. When the tide retreats, they pull those cirri safely inside and clamp their tough calcareous plates shut, waiting patiently for the ocean to return.

Now, about romance... barnacles have perhaps the most awkward dating life in the animal kingdom. 

Being permanently glued to a rock makes meeting new partners something of a logistical challenge. 

Evolution solved this problem in spectacular fashion: barnacles possess the longest penis relative to body size of any animal on Earth—sometimes extending eight times their own body length. It is an extraordinary adaptation that allows them to reach neighbouring barnacles without anyone having to leave home. 

If your love life depended on never moving from your favourite rock, you'd probably evolve some creative solutions too. I was speaking with friend and colleague, Adrienne Schmidt about this just today. 

After mating, fertilized eggs develop into tiny free-swimming nauplius larvae that drift through the plankton. As they grow, they transform into the cypris stage—a curious little explorer whose sole mission is to find the perfect place to settle. 

Once it chooses its forever home, it secretes its remarkable natural cement, attaches for life, builds its protective shell, and begins the whole wonderfully peculiar cycle again.

For creatures that spend their adult lives going absolutely nowhere, barnacles have evolved one of the most fascinating lifestyles in the sea.

NECKS FOR DAYS: THE LONG GAME OF GIRAFFE EVOLUTION

Tall, spotty, and just a little bit absurd—let’s talk about the giraffe, nature’s own high-rise browser with a flair for the dramatic.

Meet Giraffa camelopardalis, the tallest land animal striding the planet today, reaching a lofty 5–5.5 metres. 

That impossibly long neck? Not a vertebral free-for-all, but the same tidy set of seven cervical vertebrae you and I carry—each one simply stretched into elegant excess. This skyward reach lets them graze on acacia leaves beyond the reach of most herbivores, though it comes with engineering challenges. 

Their hearts—large, muscular, and working against gravity—pump blood up that long column with the help of specialized valves to keep things flowing smoothly when they dip down for a drink. No fainting on the savannah, thank you very much.

Their patchwork coats—those deliciously irregular polygons—are more than just fashion statements. Beneath each patch lies a network of blood vessels that helps regulate body temperature, a built-in cooling system for life under the African sun. 

And while they move with a languid, almost dreamy gait, don’t be fooled—giraffes can bolt at speeds approaching 60 km/h when properly motivated. All elegance, until it’s time to leg it.

Now, let’s wander into deep time, where the giraffe’s family tree gets wonderfully strange. Giraffes belong to the family Giraffidae, a once diverse clan of even-toed ungulates (Artiodactyla) that includes their only living relative, the shy, forest-dwelling okapi (Okapia johnstoni). 

But their fossil kin? Oh, they were a motley crew. There’s Sivatherium, a burly, moose-like beast from the Miocene to Pleistocene of Africa and Asia, sporting hefty ossicones and a much shorter neck. Then Samotherium, a mid-Miocene form from Eurasia, showing a modest neck—an evolutionary halfway house on the road to giraffe grandeur. 

And the delightfully odd Bohlinia, from the Late Miocene of Europe and Asia, often cited as one of the closest fossil relatives to modern giraffes, already stretching skyward in anticipation of leaves yet to be munched.

Giraffid fossils pop up across Africa, Europe, and Asia, with their story unfolding from the early Miocene, roughly 20 million years ago. Over time, as climates shifted and habitats opened, longer necks and taller frames proved advantageous—natural selection quietly favouring those who could reach just a little higher than the rest. 

Modern giraffe roams sub-Saharan Africa, from savannahs to open woodlands, while their fossil remains—teeth, limb bones, and those distinctive ossicones—turn up in ancient sediments from Kenya to India, telling a tale of a lineage that once ranged far wider than its current bounds.

And then there’s the business of those necks in combat. Male giraffes engage in “necking,” swinging their heads like slow-motion wrecking balls, using their ossicones as blunt instruments in contests of dominance. It’s part duel, part dance, and entirely mesmerizing.

So here we have them—living periscopes of the savannah, equal parts elegance and evolutionary oddity. A creature that looks almost whimsical at first glance, until you realize it is the finely tuned result of millions of years of adaptation, stretching—quite literally—toward survival.

ANCIENT ARAGONITE: FOSSIL PEARLS

One of my favourite pairs of earrings are a simple set of pearls. I have worn them pretty much every day since 2016, when I received them as a gift. 

What is it about pearls that makes them so appealing? I am certainly not alone in this. 

A simple search will show you a vast array of pearls being used for their ornamental value in cultures from all over the world. I suppose the best answer to why they are appealing is just that they are. 

If you make your way to Paris, France and happen to visit the Louvre's Persian Gallery, do take a boo at one of the oldest pearl necklaces in existence — the Susa necklace. It hails from a 2,400-year-old tomb of long lost Syrian Queen. It is a showy piece with three rows of 72 pearls per strand strung upon a bronze wire. 

A queen who truly knew how to accessorize. 

I imagine her putting the final touches of her outfit together, donning the pearls and making an entrance to wow the elite of ancient Damascus. The workmanship is superb, intermixing pure gold to offset the lustre of the pearls. 

It is precious and ancient, crafted one to two hundred years before Christ. Perhaps a gift from an Egyptian Pharaoh or from one of the Sumerians, Eblaites, Akkadians, Assyrians, Hittites, Hurrians, Mitanni, Amorites or Babylonian dignitaries who sued for peace but brought war instead. 

Questions, good questions, but questions without answers. So, what can we say of pearls? We do know what they are and it is not glamorous. Pearls form in shelled molluscs when a wee bit of sand or some other irritant gets trapped inside the shell, injuring the flesh. As a defensive and self-healing tactic, the mollusc wraps it in layer upon layer of mother-of-pearl — that glorious shiny nacre that forms pearls. 

They come in all shapes and sizes from minute to a massive 32 kilograms or 70 pounds. While a wide variety of our mollusc friends respond to injury or irritation by coating the offending intruder with nacre, there are only a few who make the truly gem-y pearls. 

These are the marine pearl oysters, Pteriidae and a few freshwater mussels. 

Aside from Pteriidae and freshwater mussels, we sometimes find less gem-y pearls inside conchs, scallops, clams, abalone, giant clams and large marine gastropods.

Pearls are made up mostly of the carbonate mineral aragonite, a polymorphous mineral — the same chemical formula but different crystal structure — to calcite and vaterite, sometimes called mu-calcium carbonate. These polymorphous carbonates are a bit like Mexican food where it is the same ingredients mixed in different ways. Visually, they are easy to tell apart — vaterite has a hexagonal crystal system, calcite is trigonal and aragonite is orthorhombic.

As pearls fossilize, the aragonite usually gets replaced by calcite, though sometimes by vaterite or another mineral. When we are very lucky, that aragonite is preserved with its nacreous lustre — that shimmery mother-of-pearl we know and love.  

Molluscs have likely been making pearls since they first evolved 530 million years ago. The oldest known fossil pearls found to date, however, are 230-210 million years old. 

This was the time when our world's landmass was concentrated into the C-shaped supercontinent of Pangaea and the first dinosaurs were calling it home. 

In the ancient ocean of Panthalassa, ecosystems were recovering from the high carbon dioxide levels that fueled the Permian extinction. Death begets life. With 95% of marine life wiped out, new species evolved to fill each niche.  

While this is where we found the oldest pearl on record, I suspect we will one day find one much older and hopefully with its lovely great-great grandmother-of-pearl intact. 

CLALLAM BAY FOSSIL FAUNA

Panopea abrupt (Conrad, 1894)

This lovely large fossil bivalve is Panopea abrupta (Conrad, 1849) an extinct species of marine mollusc in the family Hiatellidae, subclass Heterodonta.

This fossil specimen was collected from lower Miocene deposits in the Clallam Formation on the foreshore bordering the Strait of Juan de Fuca near Clallam Bay, Olympic Peninsula, northwestern Washington. 

The oldest recorded specimen of one of their modern relatives lived not too far from here in the Strait of Juan de Fuca. That lovely was an impressive 168 years old.

A geoduck sucks water containing plankton down through its long siphon, filters this for food and ejects its refuse out through a separate hole in the siphon. Adult geoducks have few natural predators, which may also contribute to their longevity.

In Alaska, sea otters and dogfish have proved capable of dislodging geoducks; starfish also attack and feed on the exposed geoduck siphon.

Clallam Bay is a sleepy little town on the northwestern edge of the Olympic Peninsula. It was founded back in the 1880s as a steamboat stop and later served as a Mill town. If you are planning to visit the fossil exposures, head to the edge of town where it meets the sea.

Once at the water's edge, head east along the shore until you can go no further. You'll find marine fossils in the sandstone on the shore and cliffs. Mind the tide as access to the fossil site is only possible at low or mid-tide. You'll have to swim for it if you time it poorly. Clallam Bay: 48°15′17″N 124°15′30″W.

Near this site, there are many additional fossil localities to explore. 

In Sequim Bay, you can find Pleistocene vertebrates as well as Miocene cetacean bones near Slip Point. Near the Twin Post Office, you can find Oligocene nautiloids and bivalves (2.5km west in the bluff); You can find crabs including, Branchioplax in the Eocene limestone concretions from Neah Bay.

References: Addicott, Warren. Molluscan paleontology of the lower Miocene Clallam Formation, northwestern Washington, Geological Survey Paper 976.

THE MAGISTY OF IRISH ELK

Irish Elk, Megaloceros giganteus

Imagine cresting a windswept hillside in the fading amber of a Pleistocene sunset. 

The tall grass parts in slow ripples, stirred by a warm evening breeze—then by something far larger. 

An Irish Elk steps into view, a towering ghost from deep time, its silhouette edged with gold. It is a view some of our ancestors were lucky to behold!

This magnificent deer—Megaloceros giganteus—was not, in fact, strictly Irish, nor truly an elk. 

It was a giant among cervids, a member of a lineage that roamed from Ireland to Siberia across vast Ice Age steppes. But Ireland’s bogs preserved their remains so exquisitely that the name stuck, and so did the awe.

Irish Elk fossils appear in abundance in the peatlands of Ireland, the loess plains of Eastern Europe, and far into Central Asia. 

Their lineage traces back to the genus Megaloceros, a group of large deer that emerged around two million years ago. 

What made M. giganteus the superstar of its clan? Two words: monumental antlers.

Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris

Spanning up to 3.7 metres (twelve feet) from tip to tip, the antlers were not simply oversized decoration—they were evolutionary billboards, broadcasting strength, health, and genetic prowess. 

They also had a hand in their fossil fame. 

When these massive antlers were unearthed centuries ago, early naturalists were convinced they belonged to mythical beasts or antediluvian monsters. 

The truth turned out to be even better: a deer so grand it nearly defied imagination.

Despite their size and majesty, Irish Elk were true deer, closely related to fallow deer and part of an ancient and diverse cervid family. Their bodies were robust, their legs strong and built for open ground, where visibility mattered and where their spectacular antlers could be displayed in their full glory.

But evolution is a dance with the environment, and as the Pleistocene climate fluctuated, the lush grasslands they depended on began to shrink. Their decline wasn’t sudden but drawn out, a slow waltz toward extinction.

The last of these giants fell only a short time ago. We do not know the exact date but the fossils share their stories as more and more are found. The youngest known fossils come from Siberia and date to about 7,700 years ago—well after most Ice Age megafauna had disappeared. 

Irish Elk, Natural History Museum London

By then, humans were spreading across Eurasia, climates were shifting, and dense forests were overtaking open plains. 

A giant deer with enormous antlers was increasingly out of place in a world thick with trees and rife with hunters.

Climate change, habitat loss, and possibly selective hunting all nudged the Irish Elk toward its final chapter. 

They are one of these species that have been talked about as contenders for using DNA to bring them back. 

Today the Irish Elk lives on in museum halls, in bog-darkened bones, and in our imaginations—a giant stepping through grass, pausing on a Pleistocene hillside as if it might turn its head toward us at any moment. There are several Irish Elk in collections and on display at museums around the world where you can view them at your leisure. 

A particularly impressive specimen is on view at the Muséum National d'Histoire Naturelle, Paris. The museum is a personal favourite of mine and worthy of a visit for its rich history and marvelous fossils, including the Irish Elk you see in the photo above. There are also wonderful examples in the British Museum in London, also worthy of a visit. 

The sheer grandeur of their size is sure to impress you! These beauties are a reminder that the world once held creatures both familiar and impossibly grand.

Illustration Credit: The lead image above was created by the supremely talented Daniel Eskridge, Paleo Illustrator from Atlanta, Georgia, USA. I share it here with permission as I have licensed the use of many of his images over the years, including this one. 

To enjoy his works (and purchase them!) to adorn your walls, visit his website at www.danieleskridge.com

KU'MIS: WARRIOR CRAB

Look how epic this little guy is! 

He is a crab — and if you asked him, the fiercest warrior that ever lived. 

While that may not be strictly true, crabs do have the heart of a warrior and will raise their claws, sometimes only millimetres into the air, to assert dominance over their world. 

Crabs are decapod crustaceans of the Phylum Arthropoda. 

In Kwak'wala, the language of the Kwakwaka'wakw of the Pacific Northwest, this brave fellow is ḵ̓u'mis — both a tasty snack and familiar to the supernatural deity Tuxw'id, a female warrior spirit. Given their natural armour and clear bravery, it is a fitting role.

They inhabit all the world's oceans, sandy beaches, many of our freshwater lakes and streams. Some few prefer to live in forests.

Crabs build their shells from highly mineralized chitin — and chitin gets around. It is the main structural component of the exoskeletons of many of our crustacean and insect friends. Shrimp, crab, and lobster all use it to build their exoskeletons.

Chitin is a polysaccharide — a large molecule made of many smaller monosaccharides or simple sugars, like glucose. 

It is handy stuff, forming crystalline nanofibrils or whiskers. Chitin is actually the second most abundant polysaccharide after cellulose. It is interesting as we usually think of these molecules in the context of their sugary context but they build many other very useful things in nature — not the least of these are the hard shells or exoskeletons of our crustacean friends.

Crabs in the Fossil Record

The earliest unambiguous crab fossils date from the Early Jurassic, with the oldest being Eocarcinus from the early Pliensbachian of Britain, which likely represents a stem-group lineage, as it lacks several key morphological features that define modern crabs. 

Most Jurassic crabs are only known from dorsal — or top half of the body — carapaces, making it difficult to determine their relationships. Crabs radiated in the Late Jurassic, corresponding with an increase in reef habitats, though they would decline at the end of the Jurassic as the result of the decline of reef ecosystems. Crabs increased in diversity through the Cretaceous and represented the dominant group of decapods by the end.

We find wonderful fossil crab specimens on Vancouver Island. The first I ever collected was at Shelter Point, then again on Hornby Island, down on the Olympic Peninsula and along Vancouver Island's west coast near Nootka Sound. 

They are, of course, found globally and are one of the most pleasing fossils to find and aggravating to prep of all the specimens you will ever have in your collection. Bless them.

STELLER’S SEA COW: A GENTLE GIANT LOST TO HISTORY

Steller’s sea cow, Hydrodamalis gigas

The Steller’s sea cow, Hydrodamalis gigas, was an enormous marine mammal that once grazed the kelp forests of the North Pacific. 

Closely related to the modern dugong—and more distantly to manatees—it belonged to the order Sirenia, an ancient group of plant-eating mammals whose evolutionary history reaches back more than 50 million years.

Growing to approximately 7.5–9 metres long and weighing several tonnes, Steller’s sea cow was considerably larger than any living sirenian. It possessed a small head, paddle-like forelimbs and a broad, forked tail. Unlike dugongs and manatees, it had no functional teeth. Instead, thick, ridged pads inside its mouth helped it crush and grind kelp.

Its dark, deeply wrinkled hide was reportedly so thick that naturalist Georg Wilhelm Steller compared it to the bark of an old oak tree. This was a sensible bit of armour for an animal feeding among sharp rocks, ice and pounding northern surf—but sadly, it offered no protection from hungry sailors carrying harpoons.

The ancestors of Steller’s sea cow evolved in warmer waters. Fossils belonging to its wider hydrodamaline lineage appear in North Pacific rocks dating back to the Miocene Epoch. Over millions of years, these sea cows became increasingly adapted to cooler environments, larger bodies and a diet dominated by kelp.

Fossils of Hydrodamalis and closely related forms have been discovered along the Pacific coasts of Japan, Russia, Alaska, California and Baja California. 

One of its better-known relatives, Hydrodamalis cuestae, lived along the western coast of North America during the Pliocene and Early Pleistocene. These giant sea cows once occupied a much broader area than the tiny refuge in which Europeans eventually encountered them.

Late Pleistocene remains of Hydrodamalis gigas have been recovered from Alaska’s Aleutian Islands. The species survived into the Holocene, but its geographic range contracted as sea levels, ocean temperatures and coastal kelp habitats changed following the last Ice Age. 

Fossil remains suggest that scattered populations may have persisted around parts of the Bering Sea long after they disappeared farther south.

Genomic research tells us that the species had experienced a long decline in population size before its final encounter with European hunters. 

By the eighteenth century, its surviving population was already small, isolated and genetically vulnerable. Natural environmental changes may therefore have placed Steller’s sea cow on increasingly thin ecological ice—but humans delivered the final blow.

Western science first learned of the animal in 1741, when Georg Wilhelm Steller observed it around Bering Island in the Commander Islands. Steller was stranded there with survivors of the ill-fated expedition led by Vitus Bering. He carefully documented the enormous animals as they floated close to shore, feeding on kelp in shallow water.

Unfortunately, the sea cows were large, slow, approachable and apparently unable to dive deeply. They also yielded tremendous quantities of meat and fat. Their hides could be fashioned into boats or coverings, while their fat was valued for food and lamp oil. Once Russian fur-hunting crews began visiting the Commander Islands, the animals became convenient floating supply depots.

Hunters harpooned them from small boats and attempted to drag the wounded animals ashore. Many struck sea cows escaped carrying embedded weapons, only to die later. The slaughter was therefore even more wasteful than the number of recovered carcasses suggests.

Their biology offered little chance of recovery. Steller’s sea cows probably matured slowly, produced one calf at a time and depended upon shallow coastal kelp beds. Extinction models indicate that hunters were killing them at many times the population’s sustainable rate. 

Only 27 years after Steller described them, the last reliably recorded individual was killed in 1768.

The commercial hunting of sea otters may also have hastened their disappearance. With fewer otters eating sea urchins, urchin populations could expand and consume more kelp—the very food upon which the sea cows depended. Researchers have modelled this proposed ecological chain reaction, although direct hunting remains the clearest and most immediate cause of extinction.

Steller’s sea cow survived millions of years of climatic change, shifting coastlines and evolving marine ecosystems. It survived the Ice Ages—but it could not survive three decades of industrial-scale human appetite.

CLALLAM BAY FOSSIL HEIST

Vertipecten fucanus (Dall, 1900)

Some water-worn samples of the bivalve Verdipectin fucanus, Clallam Formation, Clallam Bay, Washington State. Miocene.

It all began one gloriously sunny summer weekend when the planets aligned, the calendar gods smiled, and my mother and I were simultaneously free. 

Naturally, this meant one thing: we were going fossil hunting. I still get out collecting regularly but back in the day it was every weekend of the year with the bigger trips planned a few years in advance. 

Many of those were "reckie trips" scouting out new localities. The Olympic Peninsula was duly scouted and now it was back to the regular haunts. 

We rattled down through Port Angeles and set up camp at the Lyre River—mosquitoes, campfire smoke, and all the rustic feels. 

I took Mom on a grand tour of my favourite haunts: Majestic Beach (where we found some amazing fossil whale verts), a private-land site with ghost shrimp claws and urchins (with permission), and finally down to Clallam Bay and its dreamy beach exposures.

The Clallam Formation stretches along the north coast of the Olympic Peninsula, tracing the rugged edge of the Strait of Juan de Fuca from Slip Point at the eastern end of Clallam Bay to the headland of Pillar Point. Here, sandstone beds push the coastline outward in a subtle bulge, their weathered flanks dropping abruptly to a broad, wave-washed bedrock platform.

Pillar Point, Clallam Bay

Imagine standing on that foreshore: waves crash rhythmically against the stone, sending up bursts of cool spray. The surf’s deep, steady thunder pulses underfoot, while the sharper cries of gulls wheel above, carried on the wind. 

The air is rich with the briny scent of kelp and cold saltwater, a sharp, clean smell that settles in the back of the throat. Each retreating wave leaves a gleaming sheen on the rock, swirling with foam before sliding back to the sea.

Its cliffs and tidal benches have long drawn geologists—and especially paleontologists—who were captivated by the formation’s abundance of beautifully preserved fossils. 

William Healey Dall, a pioneering American geologist and paleontologist whose career spanned more than six decades. Dall loved to explore this rugged bit of coastline, studying and describing many of the mollusks now known from the Clallam Formation, adding his work to the early scientific tapestry woven from these windswept rocks.

He became one of the most prolific describers of North Pacific mollusks, naming hundreds of new species—from marine snails and clams to chitons—many of which still bear the names he assigned or honour him through genera such as Dallina and Dallididae. His work laid much of the early scientific foundation for the paleontology of the Pacific Coast.

Retracing his footsteps and to catch the tides just right, we collected in the early afternoon, blissfully unaware that we were setting up the perfect comedy plot twist. 

After a full day of hauling home the ocean’s Miocene leftovers, we decided to stash some of our fossil booty under a log—just until morning. A little paleo treasure cache. Perfectly safe. Nothing could possibly go wrong.

The next morning, we strolled back down the beach, coffees in hand, ready to retrieve our hoard like triumphant pirates.

Enter: A very enthusiastic gaggle of high school students.

There they were, marching toward us, each clutching a fossil like they’d just won the geological lottery. “Look what we found!” they cried, beaming, displaying our carefully cached treasures.

Yes. Our stash. Our carefully curated, lovingly positioned, absolutely-not-meant-for-public-consumption stash.

But honestly? They were so thrilled, we couldn’t help but be charmed. Besides, most of what I collect ends up in museums or teaching collections anyway. These young fossil hunters had simply… expedited the process. Efficient, really.

We gathered the Verdipectin together for one glamorous group photo, wished the kids well, and sent them off with pockets full of deep time. 

And our grand prize for the weekend? Some very fetching water-worn whale vertebrae—one of which was briefly enscripted into service as the crown of the King of the Lemon People, while my mother created elaborate beach sculptures to our shared amusement.. All in all, a perfect weekend.

Image: Vertipecten fucanus (Dall, 1900) is the most characteristic mollusk in assemblages from the Clallam Formation.

ELASMOSAURID PLESIOSAUR FROM MOROCCO

Libonectes atlasense / Andy Chua Collection

A beautifully preserved mandible of Libonectes atlasense, an elasmosaurid plesiosaur from early Turonian, Upper Cretaceous,  deposits of the Akrabou Formation near Asfla Village, Goulmima, Errachidia Province in eastern central Morocco.

The collecting area is in the region of Drâa-Tafilalet. You may know Errachidia as Ksar Souk. It was renamed My Rachid, in honour of the Moroccan royal family. Libonectes is a genus of sauropterygian reptile belonging to the plesiosaurs. Specimens have been found in the Britton Formation of Texas and the Akrabou Formation of Morocco.

Sauropterygian reptiles were a diverse taxon of extinct aquatic reptiles that arose from terrestrial ancestors just after the Permian extinction event. They flourished during the Triassic then all but the plesiosaurs became extinct at the end of the Triassic — with the plesiosaurs dying out at the end of the Cretaceous.

The holotype of Libonectes atlasense is an almost complete skeleton from Upper Cretaceous (mid-Turonian) rocks of the Goulmima area in eastern Morocco. Sven Sachs from the Naturkunde-Museum Bielefeld and Benjamin P. Kear from Uppsala University co-authored a paper redescribing the elasmosaurid plesiosaurian Libonectes atlasense from the Upper Cretaceous of Morocco. They did an initial assessment of the specimen in 2005, proposing a generic referral based on stratigraphical contemporaneity with Libonectes morgani from the CenomanianeTuronian of Texas, U.S.A.

Relative differences in the profile of the premaxillary-maxillary tooth row, position of the external bony nasal opening, number of teeth and rostrad inclination of the mandibular symphysis, proportions of the axial neural arch, and number of cervical and pectoral vertebrae were used to distinguish between these species.

Libonectes Scale Drawing / Hyrotrioskjan

As part of an on-going comparative appraisal of elasmosaurid plesiosaurian osteo-anatomy, they re-examined the type and formally referred material of both L. atlasense and L. morgani in order to establish species validity, as well as compile a comparative atlas for use in future works.

Their work revealed that these reportedly distinct species-level fossils are in fact virtually indistinguishable in gross morphology.

Indeed, the only substantial difference occurs in relative prominence of the midline keel along the mandibular symphysis, which might be explained by intraspecific variation. Their observations permit an amendment to the published generic diagnosis of Libonectes with the confirmation of important states such as the likely presence of a pectoral bar, distocaudad expansion of the humerus, and an epipodial foramen.

And we see some entirely new features. Novel features include a prominent ‘prong-like’ ventral midline process on the coracoids and the development of a median pelvic bar that encloses a central fenestration. Their work shows that the composite remains of L. morgani thus constitute one of the most complete elasmosaurid skeletal hypodigms documented worldwide, and evidence a trans-Atlantic distribution for this apparently dispersive species during the early Late Cretaceous. The impressive mandible you see here is in the collection of Andy Chua.

Sachs, Sven and Kear, Benjamin. (2017). Redescription of the elasmosaurid plesiosaurian Libonectes atlasense from the Upper Cretaceous of Morocco. Cretaceous Research. 74. 205-222. 10.1016/j.cretres.2017.02.017.

Photo: Libonectes atlasense specimen, Andy Chua

Drawing By Hyrotrioskjan - Own work, CC BY-SA 4.0, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=57716018

FOSSIL HUNTRESS PODCAST: DEAD SEXY SCIENCE

Geeky goodness from the Fossil Huntress. If you love paleontology, you will love this stream. Dinosaurs, trilobites, ammonites—you'll find them all here!

Close your eyes & fly with me as we head out together to explore Earth's rich history written in her rock. Travel to extraordinary places, sacred sites & unearth mysteries millions of years old on the Fossil Huntress Podcast.

This stream is for those who share an enduring passion for our world's hidden treasures, its wild places & want to uncover her beauty stone by stone.

This is the story of the making of our Earth and the many wonderful creatures who have called it home.

Join in the exploration of the fascinating science of paleontology — that lens that examines ancient animals, plants & ecosystems from wee single-celled organisms to big & mighty dinosaurs. Save the stream to your favorites to listen while you drive, head out fossil collecting or snuggle in for the night!

​To listen now, visit: https://open.spotify.com/show/1hH1wpDFFIlYC9ZW5uTYVL

OIL IN WATER BEAUTY: FOSSILS OF FOLKSTONE

Sheer beauty — a beautiful Euhoplites ammonite from Folkstone, UK. I've been really enjoying looking at all oil-in-water colouring and chunkiness of these ammonites.

Euhoplites is an extinct ammonoid cephalopod from the Lower Cretaceous, characterized by strongly ribbed, more or less evolute, compressed to inflated shells with flat or concave ribs, typically with a deep narrow groove running down the middle.

In some, ribs seem to zigzag between umbilical tubercles and parallel ventrolateral clavi. In others, the ribs are flexious and curve forward from the umbilical shoulder and lap onto either side of the venter.

Its shell is covered in the lovely lumps and bumps we associate with the genus. The function of these adornments are unknown. I wonder if they gave them greater strength to go deeper into the ocean to hunt for food. 

They look to have been a source of hydrodynamic drag, likely preventing Euhoplites from swimming at speed. Studying them may give some insight into the lifestyle of this ancient marine predator. Euhoplites had shells ranging in size up to a 5-6cm. 

We find them in Lower Cretaceous, middle to upper Albian age strata. Euhoplites has been found in Middle and Upper Albian beds in France where it is associated respectively with Hoplites and Anahoplites, and Pleurohoplites, Puzosia, and Desmoceras; in the Middle Albian of Brazil with Anahoplites and Turrilites; and in the Cenomanian of Texas.

This species is the most common ammonite from the Folkstone Fossil Beds in southeastern England where a variety of species are found, including this 37mm beauty from the collections of José Juárez Ruiz.

MEET THE ICHTHYOSAURS: THE ORIGINAL SEA DRAGONS

Long before whales began singing through the oceans—and while dinosaurs were still finding their feet on land—sleek, sharp-toothed reptiles were already patrolling the ancient seas.

Meet the ichthyosaurs.

Their name means “fish lizard,” though they were neither fish nor dinosaurs. Ichthyosaurs were marine reptiles whose distant ancestors had lived on land before returning to the water. 

Over millions of years, evolution reshaped their bodies for life at sea: legs became flippers, snouts lengthened, tails deepened and streamlined bodies emerged that looked remarkably like those of modern dolphins.

This similarity is a lovely example of convergent evolution. When unrelated animals face the same challenges, evolution sometimes arrives at strikingly similar solutions. If you need to move quickly through water, a torpedo-shaped body is difficult to improve upon. Dolphins would not appear until tens of millions of years after the last ichthyosaurs vanished, but nature had already tested the design—and it worked beautifully.

The earliest known ichthyosaur relatives appeared around 250 million years ago, shortly after the devastating end-Permian mass extinction. They diversified rapidly during the Triassic Period and remained part of marine ecosystems for roughly 160 million years. 

Some early forms had long, flexible bodies and may have swum with an eel-like motion. Later species developed the familiar compact, dolphin-shaped profile, complete with powerful tails and paddle-like limbs. Natural History Museum

They came in a remarkable range of sizes. Some were only a metre or two long, while others became true ocean giants. 

One of the most extraordinary was Shonisaurus sikanniensis, discovered beside the Sikanni Chief River in northeastern British Columbia. At approximately 21 metres long, this immense Triassic ichthyosaur was longer than many modern whales. 

Excavating it from its remote riverside resting place required three field seasons between 1999 and 2001. Today, the specimen is displayed at Alberta’s Royal Tyrrell Museum—a magnificent reminder that some of the largest creatures ever to swim once moved through seas covering what is now western Canada. Royal Tyrrell Museum

Ichthyosaurs were active predators. Depending on the species, they hunted fish, squid-like cephalopods and other marine animals. Their long jaws were often lined with conical teeth ideal for gripping slippery prey—nature’s answer to the problem of trying to catch lunch when lunch is wet, fast and deeply opposed to being eaten.

Many ichthyosaurs also possessed enormous eyes supported by rings of bone called sclerotic rings. These structures helped the eyes maintain their shape under water and may have allowed some species to hunt in dimly lit depths. Ophthalmosaurus—whose name appropriately means “eye lizard”—had eyes among the largest known in any vertebrate. 

Imagine a marine reptile cutting through dark Jurassic water, guided by eyes built to gather the faintest traces of light. It is equal parts beautiful and unsettling, which is really the sweet spot for prehistoric ocean life.

Perhaps the most intimate ichthyosaur fossils are those preserving mothers with embryos inside their bodies. Ichthyosaurs gave birth to live young rather than crawling ashore to lay eggs. Some extraordinary specimens even preserve babies in the process of being born.

Their young were generally delivered tail-first, an adaptation that may have reduced the danger of drowning during birth. For an animal whose limbs had become flippers and whose body was completely committed to life at sea, returning to land was no longer an option. The ocean was not merely where ichthyosaurs hunted—it was where they lived, mated, gave birth and died.

Their fossils can preserve astonishing details. In a few exceptional specimens, the outlines of skin and soft tissue reveal dorsal fins and the shape of the tail, features that bones alone cannot fully show. 

Gastroliths from Trent River Ichthyosaur

Fossilised stomach contents offer glimpses of their final meals, while injuries and healed bones record encounters with predators, prey and the everyday hazards of life in Mesozoic seas.

Ichthyosaurs survived several enormous environmental changes, but they disappeared approximately 90 million years ago during the Late Cretaceous—well before the asteroid impact that ended the reign of the non-avian dinosaurs. 

Their extinction appears to have been connected to changing oceans, climatic instability and disruptions to marine ecosystems rather than one tidy dramatic event. Evolution rarely provides us with a simple exit scene.

The story of the ichthyosaur is also woven into the beginnings of palaeontology. 

In the early nineteenth century, the brilliant fossil hunter Mary Anning helped excavate an important ichthyosaur skeleton from the cliffs near Lyme Regis, England. Her discoveries challenged contemporary ideas about extinction and revealed that Earth had once been inhabited by animals unlike anything living today. Natural History Museum

To stand before an ichthyosaur fossil is to look at one of evolution’s great experiments: a land-dwelling reptile transformed into a master of the open ocean. It carried no snorkel, laid no eggs on a convenient beach and bore no relation to the dolphins it so strongly resembled.

It was something older, stranger and entirely its own. A fish-shaped reptile. A mother of the Mesozoic seas. A swift hunter with dinner-grabbing teeth and, in some species, eyes large enough to make even the darkness nervous. A true sea dragon from a world long gone.

Image: Asset ID: 2547389153

THE WOOLLY RHINOCEROS: BUILT LIKE A TANK DRESSED FOR WINTER

Woolly rhinoceros, Coelodonta antiquitatis

The Woolly rhinoceros, Coelodonta antiquitatis, was one of the great lumbering herbivores of Pleistocene Eurasia. 

Its range stretched across northern Asia and Europe, where it occupied the cold, dry grasslands often called the mammoth steppe.

This was not a modern rhinoceros that had simply found a large coat and decided to brave the snow. It was superbly adapted to cold environments. 

Woolly rhinoceroses possessed thick skin, a dense coat of hair, small ears and a compact body that helped conserve heat. 

A substantial fatty hump over the shoulders provided additional energy reserves and supported the powerful muscles needed to carry its enormous head and horns.

The result was an animal roughly comparable in size to a living white rhinoceros, but with the appearance of someone who had dressed for winter and then lost patience with absolutely everyone.

Its skull supported two horns. The front horn was especially long and flattened from side to side. 

Some researchers have suggested that woolly rhinoceroses may have used this horn to sweep snow away from low-growing vegetation, although it was undoubtedly useful for defence and displays as well.

Its scientific name is particularly delightful. Coelodonta means “hollow tooth,” referring to the deep grooves in the animal’s molars. Those teeth were built for grinding tough, abrasive grasses and other low vegetation. 

Woolly rhinoceroses were predominantly grazers, harvesting the mammoth steppe with all the delicacy of a heavily armed lawnmower.

Their wide lips and low head posture were well suited to cropping plants close to the ground. Microscopic wear and chemical evidence preserved in their teeth also help us reconstruct what they ate and the environments in which they lived.

The woolly rhinoceros was so familiar to Palaeolithic people that it appears in prehistoric art. 

Ancient humans painted and engraved these formidable animals on cave walls and pieces of bone. 

One can imagine that a woolly rhinoceros crossing the landscape was not easily overlooked. It was several tonnes of fur, horn and territorial opinion.

The species survived until approximately 14,000 years ago. Recent genetic research suggests its disappearance may have been relatively rapid and closely associated with abrupt climatic warming and the transformation of its cold, dry habitat. 

Rather than declining steadily through a long period of severe inbreeding, some of the final populations may have remained genetically healthy until conditions changed dramatically. 

The disappearance of the mammoth steppe meant the loss of the particular environment upon which this highly specialized grazer depended. 

Being impressively furry, exceptionally large and equipped with a magnificent horn can take you only so far when your entire ecosystem begins changing beneath your feet.

THE MARINE MAMMAL THAT LOOKS LIKE A HIPPO DESIGNED BY COMMITTEE

Standing in the Age of Mammals Hall at the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County is one of the most delightfully perplexing mammals ever to paddle, wade or lumber along the Pacific coast.

At first glance, its skeleton appears almost familiar.

It has the solid, barrel-shaped build of a hippopotamus, the heavy bones of a marine herbivore, the forward-projecting teeth of an animal with very strong opinions about vegetation, and four stout limbs that look as though they might have carried it across the seafloor—or at least helped it negotiate the shallows with considerable determination.

But this is neither a hippopotamus nor a manatee.

It is a desmostylian: a member of an entirely extinct order of aquatic and semi-aquatic mammals that once lived around the northern Pacific Rim.

The museum specimen has often been identified in photographs and older references as Paleoparadoxia. 

More precisely, it is now classified as Neoparadoxia cecilialina, a close relative within the paleoparadoxiid family. Taxonomy is a living science, and fossil animals occasionally receive new names as researchers examine their skeletons in greater detail. The animal has not changed, of course. It remains magnificently deceased and entirely unconcerned about the paperwork.

Neoparadoxia cecilialina lived approximately 10.5 million years ago during the Late Miocene Epoch, when the coastline, climate and marine communities of California were very different from those we know today.

This remarkably complete skeleton was recovered from rocks of the Monterey Formation in Orange County, California. The individual was approximately 2.4 metres—or about eight feet—long when it died. It was not yet fully grown. An adult may have reached approximately 2.7 metres in length, making it roughly the length of a large sofa, although considerably more difficult to arrange around a coffee table.

It may have been about eleven years old at the time of its death, though estimating the age of an extinct mammal with no perfect modern equivalent requires careful comparison and a certain amount of scientific humility.

And desmostylians demand humility.

They were such peculiar animals that scientists have debated almost every aspect of them: how they moved, how much time they spent on land, what they ate, how they were related to other mammals and whether their heavy bodies were better suited to swimming, wading or walking underwater.

Imagine a hippo, a manatee and a small elephant submitting design suggestions for the same animal.

Then imagine the committee approving all three.

Desmostylians appeared during the Oligocene and survived into the Miocene, living along the margins of the North Pacific. Their fossils have been found on both sides of the ocean, including western North America and Japan. Unlike seals, whales and sea cows, however, they left no living descendants. The entire order vanished.

That makes Desmostylia especially intriguing. We are not merely looking at an unusual extinct species; we are looking at the remains of a completely lost experiment in marine mammal evolution.

The name Desmostylia comes from Greek words referring to “bundled pillars,” a wonderfully architectural description of the animals’ extraordinary back teeth. 

Their molars were composed of clustered columns of enamel, giving them an appearance rather like bundles of tightly packed tubes.

These were not delicate little teeth designed for nibbling parsley.

They formed a powerful crushing surface, suited to processing tough vegetation. Desmostylians are generally interpreted as herbivores that fed in or near coastal waters, possibly consuming aquatic plants, sea grasses, algae or shoreline vegetation. 

Exactly what appeared on the menu remains debated because stomach contents and polite Miocene restaurant receipts have not survived.

The front of the mouth was equally impressive. Neoparadoxia had forward-projecting incisors and enlarged canine-like teeth. Combined with the deep lower jaw, they gave the skull a wonderfully strange profile.

Some reconstructions make the mouth look rather like the scoop of a small excavator.

I do not wish to suggest that Neoparadoxia was the backhoe of the Miocene, but if it had arrived at a construction site wearing a reflective vest, few of us would have questioned its credentials.

Those teeth and jaws may have helped the animal grasp, uproot or gather vegetation from the seabed. Its long snout could have been used to crop plants while its heavy body remained submerged in shallow coastal water.

The skeleton also reveals an animal built very differently from a whale or dolphin. Its limbs were still substantial and weight-bearing. Rather than being transformed into sleek flippers, they retained strong bones and distinct digits. This suggests that Neoparadoxia could support itself on the bottom and perhaps travel on land, although it would hardly have been graceful.

There is still scientific disagreement about precisely how desmostylians moved. Some studies have interpreted paleoparadoxiids as slow swimmers or bottom walkers inhabiting relatively shallow water. Their dense bones could have acted as ballast, helping them remain submerged without bobbing helplessly back to the surface.

Think of a diver’s weight belt, except the weight belt is the skeleton and removing it is not an option.

Dense bones are found in several aquatic or semi-aquatic mammals. They can help counteract the buoyancy produced by lungs and body fat, allowing an animal to remain at a preferred depth while feeding. 

Research into desmostylian bone structure suggests that different members of the group developed different degrees of aquatic adaptation.

Paleoparadoxia and its relatives possessed particularly dense bones and may have moved slowly through shallow coastal environments, hovering, paddling or walking along the bottom as they searched for food.

This was not a creature built for chasing tuna across the open ocean.

It was built to approach a bed of aquatic vegetation with patience, mass and purpose.

Its broad body, powerful shoulders and large pelvis suggest an animal capable of pushing itself through water and over uneven substrates. On land, it may have moved with an awkward, rolling gait. In the water, the same body could have been far better supported.

The result was likely an animal that looked somewhat cumbersome from our perspective but was well adapted to its own coastal world. Evolution does not work toward elegance as judged by humans. It works toward surviving long enough to reproduce.

Sometimes the result is a gazelle.

Sometimes the result is an eight-foot marine mammal that resembles a hippopotamus wearing an elephant costume over a manatee foundation garment.

For many years, desmostylians were commonly placed near proboscideans—the group containing elephants—and sirenians, which include manatees and dugongs. More recent analyses have complicated that picture, and their precise position within the mammalian family tree remains debated.

This uncertainty is not a failure of palaeontology. It is one of the reasons the science is so compelling.

Fossils preserve evidence, but rarely all of it. Researchers must compare the shapes of bones, patterns of tooth development, microscopic bone structure, geological age and evolutionary relationships. New discoveries can strengthen an old interpretation or turn it neatly on its head.

Neoparadoxia is a beautiful reminder that classification is not merely the act of attaching a label to a display. It is an ongoing investigation into ancestry, adaptation and deep time.

The museum skeleton is particularly valuable because it is so complete. Many fossil mammals are known from isolated teeth, fragments of jaw or scattered bones. A nearly complete skeleton allows palaeontologists to examine how the skull, spine, ribs, limbs and pelvis worked together.

One tooth can tell us that an animal existed.

A skeleton can begin to tell us how it lived.

The individual displayed in Los Angeles is also scientifically important because it represents one of the youngest known desmostylians. It lived near the end of the group’s long evolutionary history, shortly before these peculiar marine mammals disappeared from the fossil record.

Why did they vanish?

We do not yet have a simple answer. Changes in sea level, climate, coastal habitats, available vegetation and competition with other marine herbivores may all have contributed. As desmostylians disappeared, sirenians—manatees and dugongs—became the surviving large marine herbivores.

That does not necessarily mean that sea cows marched into the North Pacific and evicted them with tiny legal notices. Evolutionary replacement is rarely so tidy. Environmental change can alter habitats and food sources, favouring one group while placing another under increasing pressure.

Whatever happened, the desmostylian experiment eventually ended.

Today, their bones survive in Miocene marine rocks around the Pacific and in museum collections where we continue to ask questions of them.

This is why museum displays matter.

A mounted skeleton is not simply an attractive object placed in a hall for paleontological tourism. It is the visible result of discovery, excavation, preparation, anatomical study, comparison and scientific revision. It allows schoolchildren, researchers, travellers and gloriously enthusiastic fossil people to stand face-to-face with an organism unlike anything alive today.

We are accustomed to imagining marine mammals as whales, dolphins, seals, walruses, manatees and dugongs. Neoparadoxia challenges that tidy modern picture. The ancient oceans supported entire forms of mammalian life that have since disappeared.

Ten and a half million years ago, something large and heavy moved through California’s coastal waters. It lowered its peculiar head toward the bottom, used its formidable jaws to gather vegetation and carried a skeleton dense enough to help anchor it beneath the waves.

It had no way of knowing that one day its bones would stand in a museum in Los Angeles, surrounded by visitors attempting to decide whether it looked more like a hippo, a manatee, an elephant or an ambitious piece of earth-moving equipment.

The scientifically correct answer is that it was none of them.

It was a desmostylian. It was Neoparadoxia cecilialina. And it was gloriously, marvellously strange.

Sources: Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County—Vertebrate Paleontology, Smithsonian Ocean—Desmostylian locomotion and ecology, PLOS ONE—Bone structure and aquatic adaptation in Desmostylia, and Royal Society Open Science—Desmostylian fossil history.

Lead Image: Asset id: 2710687265. Los Angeles, USA 9.04.2025: Preserved skeleton of a prehistoric Paleoparadoxia fossil mammal displayed at the Natural History Museum, Los Angeles