Fun Poll: Which of these would you like to see discovered? [Archive]

Architeuthoceras

Oct 01, '03, 10:38am

We know what all those animals looked like alive, except ammonites, so just a glimpse of a live one would be wonderful. To put them in the oceans today would give Steve & Kat way too much to do. And I would have to move closer to the sea and take up scuba. But what would I do with my poor old jackass Maybell? :(

:ammonite:

Melissa

Oct 01, '03, 2:10pm

I agree with Kevin, ammonites, but for a far more frivolous reason - their fossils structure is so pleasing and pretty, I'd like to see one in motion. No matter how many trilobite cookies I eat, I'm just not as excited about trilobites. But I'll post a photo of a trilobite fossil that was given to me soon.

Melissa

Steve O'Shea

Oct 01, '03, 4:39pm

Jean

Oct 01, '03, 5:08pm

Well, I would normally go for ammonites or belemnites but I think Hallucenogenia is just tooo weird & I'd loove to see one in the flesh (so to speak!)

J

Phil

Oct 02, '03, 3:03pm

No-one chosen the trilobite yet? Those things were not as popular as I thought!

Good choice Jean!

Here's a picture of a fossil and a recent reconstruction of Hallucigenia from the Cambrian Chen-jiang fauna of China. This animal is so weird it was named after a hallucination! Originally reconstructed as marching along the sea-bed with seven pairs of spines forming the 'legs'; it is now thought the animal was reconstructed upside-down. The animal probably walked along on tube feet with the spines running along its' torso projecting upwards. The 'head' is always indistinct and shows no clearly defined sense organs. The animal was probably related to the velvet worm, Peripatus, as part of the Onychophora and examples covered in armoured plates have been discovered in China.

Very strange indeed.

Jean

Oct 02, '03, 4:49pm

Thanks Phil, That is such a weird beastie!

J

WhiteKiboko

Oct 02, '03, 7:12pm

You just tell us what sort of environment to look in and we'll happily go in search .... we'd abandon all else at the drop of a hat!

Just have Kat set the Way Back Machine for a really long time ago.....

:madsci:

tonmo

Oct 04, '03, 7:16am

This animal is so weird it was named after a hallucination!
I love that!

Phil

Oct 04, '03, 9:54am

Well, we are over halfway and it's neck and neck, or rather mantle and thorax between the enigmatic molluscs and the armoured arthropods.

Could this specimen of Mixopterus swing the vote in favour of the bugs, I wonder?

Mixopterus (http://www.toyen.uio.no/palmus/galleri/montre/nn007.htm)

um...

Oct 04, '03, 10:25am

What about Opabinia? Weird, weird, weird.

Phil

Oct 04, '03, 4:06pm

Opabinia?

Another cracking choice!

This Cambrian oddity had five eyes and a flexible trunk with a grasping claw at the end. It had a segmented carapace and has caused many a headache amongst palaeontologists keen on reconstructing and classifying this animal. Dr Sam Gon III has recently redescribed the animal and has interpreted the claw as being reconstructed at 90 degrees to its original plane. Opabinia, has also been reinterpreted as an anomalocarid so perhaps you could have voted for 6)!

The example below comes from the Burgess Shale. Dr Gon's images, with fantastic fossil specimens is available to view here:

Opabinia (http://www.geocities.com/goniagnostus/species2.html)

Architeuthoceras

Oct 05, '03, 3:54pm

Something to sway the vote towards ammonites

Nipponites (http://www.yale.edu/ypmip/taxon/ceph/36846.html)

Would you have seen this floating in midwater or laying on the bottom?

:ammonite: Externally shelled cephalopods RULE :!:

Fujisawas Sake

Oct 06, '03, 4:14am

Nope.... all of you are wrong...

Bring back LIOPLEURODON! (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dinosaurs/chronology/149/)

Yup, big Jurassic baddie with lots of teeth and a WHOLE LOTTA attitude.

Hee hee

John

"Not to put too fine a point on it
Say I'm the only bee in your bonnet
Put a little birdhouse in your soul..."

They Might Be Giants

Phil

Oct 06, '03, 10:55am

Nipponites mirabilis was certainly one of the weirdest ammonites as can be seen from the link and the picture. It demonstrates possibly the most extreme derivation from the classic spiral shell shape amongst all of the ammonoidea, even amongst the heteromorphs. It looks like an irregular tangle of whorls but is really just an interconnecting mass of U-bends

It was a very late ammonite, it lived in the late Cretaceous and has been found in Hokkaido, Japan, and in North America implying it had a very widespread distribution. It has been speculated that this ammonite lived in the surface waters drifting at a shallow depth and feeding on plankton. The ‘head’ was probably angled downwards as it seized small animals with its arms. Given the shape of the shell it must have been a poor swimmer and probably had a lifestyle similar to a jellyfish. The animal must have rolled as it grew and probably had a changing orientation as it developed.

Good choice, Kevin.

(I love the way people always pick the weirdest animals!)

Fujisawas Sake

Oct 06, '03, 1:41pm

Phil,

Is that type of above mentioned change of orientation similar to gastropod torsion? :snail: Do you think the viscera and everything would have also changed as well?

These ammonite shell designs get weirder and weirder...

John

Colin

Oct 06, '03, 2:09pm

I had to vote 'other'

okay its not a ceph but what a buzz to see one of these cruising about!!!

Carcharodon megalodon!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!

That's my vote!

Phil

Oct 06, '03, 3:34pm

Colin,

Megalodon? Personally I think we are better off without those! Amazing to think they are known from the teeth alone; no other body parts have been recorded, as far as I know. Very impressive animal though.....from a distance.

John,

Good question; and I admit I am not able to answer it off the top of my head to be honest. I'll have to do a bit of research first. However, I can tell you that Nipponites is believed to have evolved from helically coiled ammonites such as is represented by Bostrychoceras. You may like to have a look at the family of ammonites known as Nostoceratidae, these contain many of the strangest heteromorphs.

I just can't imagine Nipponites growing and maintaining the same orientation. The thing must have twisted as chambers were added; the axis of orientation must have been forever shifting.

Some of these bizarre heteromorphs were not the specialised end-lineages they appear to be, some of the uncoiled or partially coiled heteromorphs in the Lower Cretaceous produced descendants with normal or near-normal coiling.

I apologise, that was not much of an answer for you.

Fujisawas Sake

Oct 06, '03, 4:48pm

Phil,

No, I think that was a pretty darn good answer. I think that torsion might betray a more direct evolutionary link between cephs and gastros. Only time will tell.

I'll have to look more up on my ammonites...

John

chrono_war01

Jan 23, '05, 3:43am

Phil

Jan 24, '05, 12:26am

I voted for other. Bring back the :vampyro: ( I used this since I can't spell)
Since they live in shallow water back, then we can see how they evolved into the ones we have now. Plus, beachgoers would have a lot more fun!

A good choice, Chrono!

You know, a couple of years back a number of beaks of animal called Provamproteuthis were recovered from the stomachs of some Cretaceous plesiosaurs from Japan. They were about twice as large as the modern Vampire squid and lived in much shallower water as the plesiosaur is not believed to have been a deep diving animal. It would be really interesting to see these animals and try and work out how, when and why the Vampire took the plunge into the dark......

chrono_war01

Jan 24, '05, 5:48am

From big lump that lives in shallow water to small midget lump in deep water. ( Actually deep water would be an understatment)

H. lunulata

Mar 27, '05, 2:23pm

it would be cool if we could do that

monty

Apr 09, '05, 8:21pm

I just can't imagine Nipponites growing and maintaining the same orientation. The thing must have twisted as chambers were added; the axis of orientation must have been forever shifting.

I thought orientation was one of the few things we can determine accurately, by looking at the "bathtub ring" left by the cameral fluid in the chambers... I don't know the specifics for Nipponites, but I read about this in the geology library at some point when I was avoiding real work or something, and it seemed like this had been done pretty exhaustively for all the various shapes of chambered cephalopods...

Phil

Apr 11, '05, 7:16am

I thought orientation was one of the few things we can determine accurately, by looking at the "bathtub ring" left by the cameral fluid in the chambers... I don't know the specifics for Nipponites, but I read about this in the geology library at some point when I was avoiding real work or something, and it seemed like this had been done pretty exhaustively for all the various shapes of chambered cephalopods...

Yep, I think you are right about the cameral deposits Monty. Much work has been done on this, much of which involves complicated mathematics, in which case my brain just goes into immediate shutdown. However, here's a link to one such article which deals with early ammonoids, their orientation and locomotion. You will need Adobe Acrobat pdf reader to read it though:

Origin of ammonoid locomotion by Christian Klug and Dieter Korn (2004) (http://app.pan.pl/acta49/app49-235.pdf)

And here is another, very readable, examination of ammonoid heteromorph orientation for you. It includes some nice little animations:

BODY POSITION AND THE FUNCTIONAL MORPHOLOGY OFCRETACEOUS HETEROMORPH AMMONITES by Neale Monks and Jeremy Young. (http://palaeo-electronica.org/1998_1/monks/text.pdf)

I think Nipponites is believed to have rolled as it grew as its centre of gravity must have constantly shifted before the final body chamber grew. I'm not sure what work has been done specifically on Nipponites, and I expect that most of it has been in Japan, but I'll keep an eye out for you if I find anything interesting.

Rona

Jul 13, '05, 1:50am

For some reason that escapes me, I cannot quote other people's messages, but I gotta agree with Colin... Megaladon!!! A shark the size of my house would definitely impress me. :vampyro:

erich orser

Jul 13, '05, 7:17pm

When I was marooned along the backwater shores of the Chesapeake, my friends from California would want to spend all of their time searching our local cliffs and beaches for megalodon teeth! Found amazing amounts of other fossil sharks' teeth, porpoise earbones, dental bits from skates, but local megalodon finds proved elusive. They turned-up in local antique stores in the jewelry cabinets all the time, however. Alas, none of the local clay was quite old enough for exotic cephs.

Snafflehound

Jul 13, '05, 11:39pm

I wouldn't mind a plesiosaur

chrono_war01

Jul 14, '05, 3:04am

who wouldn't mind. Might be a new stable diet, after we've exhuasted the world's fisheries.

Snafflehound

Jul 15, '05, 12:05am

I think trilobites would be popular as pets but probably not good eating.

erich orser

Jul 15, '05, 1:02am

I think trilobites would be popular as pets but probably not good eating.

Think they would be kind of similar to horseshoe crab? I know the local rockfish just loved to eat those, but I've never heard of them for human consumption. I don't know though, get the best trilobite meat, some eggs, bread crumbs, dry mustard, Old Bay Seasoning, Worcestershire, a little hot sauce... hmmm... Maryland Trilobite Cakes... :trilobit: :beer: :party:

Snafflehound

Jul 15, '05, 2:11am

What did the body look like under all those plates? I guess if it was good enough for Anomalocaris it's good enough for me...

Snafflehound

Jul 15, '05, 2:24am

Nope.... all of you are wrong...

Bring back LIOPLEURODON! (http://www.bbc.co.uk/dinosaurs/chronology/149/)

Yup, big Jurassic baddie with lots of teeth and a WHOLE LOTTA attitude.

Afflicted with insomnia, I looked up Liopleurodon ferox (great name that)

http://www.plesiosaur.com/liopleurodon.htm

This says that 25m length the BBC quoted was an exaggeration.. bit like those 50m long giant squids I guess [:(]

chrono_war01

Jul 15, '05, 2:51pm

you mean 60m long Giant Squids, the longest one recorded was 55m, I think.

erich orser

Jul 15, '05, 9:28pm

I think you're thinking in terms of feet, not meters. I would certainly love a 55m squid swimming around, but those seem to only exist when certain (deceased) scientists realize that they're on camera!

Snafflehound

Jul 16, '05, 1:28am

60m squid = :cthulhu:

Phil

Jul 16, '05, 8:35am

you mean 60m long Giant Squids, the longest one recorded was 55m, I think.

Well unfortunately the press does tend to exaggerate the size of Architeuthis. The maximum Total Length of a female specimen recorded is 13m, or 37ft. It is thought that the 1887 Lyall Bay NZ specimen that was recorded as 55ft was probably stretched out like a rubber band thus exaggerating the length. Mesonychoteuthis, the Colossal Squid, probably grows larger than Architeuthis though whether we will ever catch or photograph such a fully mature beast is another matter entirely.

For more information, please check out Steve and Kat's Giant and Colossal Squid Factsheet:

http://www.tonmo.com/science/public/giantsquidfacts.php

PS, any chance of seeing your sharks teeth, Erich? They sound most interesting.

erich orser

Jul 16, '05, 10:00am

Unfortunately, my teeth were donated to Master Mark Miller upon his return from Maryland back to Los Angeles, and he jealously guards them! Actually, in addition to being an accomplished blues/blue grass/country musician, he's nuts about fossils and used to volunteer cleaning them over at the Page Museum at the La Brea Tar Pits. I'm sure we can do some kind of photographic layout that I can send your way. The Western shores of Chesapeake Bay, particularly the beaches under the clay cliffs of Calvert County, are famous for their vast amounts of fossil teeth. Most of the ones we found down there were tiny, although a few that looked to be tiger shark were around an inch.

Just curious regarding squid lengths: cephalopods are extremely elastic while alive. This being the case, coupled with the fact that the only really large squid we have to measure are all dead, isn't there the chance that until we can record the reach of a living specimen (presumably seizing prey), we'll never really know their actual lengths? The 37-foot female for instance - could she conceivably extend longer than that while alive? Perhaps to 38 feet? :wink:

Squid Queen

Aug 26, '05, 7:42pm

I don't know if anyone has read Richard Ellis' 'In Search of the Giant Squid', but he does mention that there is a theory floating around that the giant squids washed ashore were only teenager squids and that the adults might possibly be something like 200ft. Wouldn't that be fun?
Oh and... Glyptodon. I'd love giant cephs again, but Glyptodon and the Giant Ground Sloths of old. Yessir!

chrono_war01

Aug 27, '05, 2:11pm

you mean 60m long Giant Squids, the longest one recorded was 55m, I think.

Sorry. :oops:

Michael Roth

Apr 09, '07, 9:06am

I chose the giant nautilus, but I bet the sea scorpion would be wicked in garlic butter...

Apr 10, '07, 6:23pm

Mesonychoteuthis, the Colossal Squid, probably grows larger than Architeuthis though whether we will ever catch or photograph such a fully mature beast is another matter entirely.

What prophetic doubt, with hindsight!

Phil

Apr 10, '07, 6:32pm

Oh, Messie, yep, photos of the things are ten a penny these days. :wink: Did I really write that? It's funny when these old threads get resurrected as one gets haunted by the embarrassing things one has posted in the past. It's like meeting an old girlfriend out of the blue, usually utter horror ensues.

Back on topic, yes, I think the giant 11m Ordovician nautiloids would still be my pick too. Imagine poking around the shells on a beach after a storm!

Michael Roth

Apr 10, '07, 11:16pm

They would make a fantastic beachfront hut :>

willsquish

Jun 11, '07, 7:55pm

Hmm... Well a new reply to an old topic, but still, if I would bring back something, I'd like to see what one of the vendian animals looked like. Specifically YORGIA! Asymmetrical animals don't appear so commonly today. It'd be interesting to figure out where they fit in to things. See pic:
http://vend.paleo.ru/images/biota/1-Yorgia03.jpg
or namacalathus, also from the precambrian, for the same reason, except for the fact it actually is symmetrical.
http://www-personal.umich.edu/~wstoddar/nama.jpg
--Will