Ausarchosaur
@ausarchosaur
Biologist with Master’s degree. Vertebrate zoology and paleontology, but I’ll post about whatever.
Thanks to all the Bayverse Transformers posting I've been seeing on my tl lately, I've been obsessing over that epic 3v1 forest battle again. Idk if I've ever posted this on Bluesky, but here's a real example of an epic 3v1 with a white-tailed deer and three grey wolves.
I don’t care what organism it belongs to, if it’s a fossil, it’s cool m. I’d be ecstatic of I hauled up a fossil walrus skull from a fishing boat.
I don’t know when these were put up, but I didn’t notice these on my previous visits. Anyway, I think it’s cool that they now feature recently extinct species in addition to their flagship dinosaurs.
Well, finding this Spinosaurus unexpectedly has renewed my interest in getting Schleich’s other 2026 prehistoric animal releases.
I know it’s just due to how recent the Spinosaurus toy is, but man, it and these other two are like night and day. All of them are Schleich models.
Tried to take photos of my figures on a natural background. It wasn’t perfect, but a step in the right direction.
A while ago I took a picture of a prehistoric H. sapiens diorama at the American Museum of Natural History; the bone hut reconstructed here seems to be based on the ones found in Mezhyrich.
Mammoth bone huts were crazy. Of particular note, look at how many jawbones were used to create them, and then remember that each mammoth only has one mandible.
Random thought: I wonder what notungulates and litopterns would have tasted like. Just like certain modern mammals or their own taste entirely?
I was curious to know what kinds of projectile points were used to hunt woolly mammoths specifically. I found this: a fractured fragment of flint embedded in the rib of a woolly mammoth. It was found in a site called Kraków Spadzita in Poland.
Trying not to make any judgements, but I see this is what Curiosity Stream’s been putting on since I cancelled
If I had a nickel for every time there was a 3v1 fight between Megatron plus two other Decepticons and the then-leader of the Autobots…
I found some photos online where black caimans seem to have preyed on smaller caimans.
The skull of the extinct Morenelaphus brachyceros from the Pleistocene of South America. It was one of the largest deer that lived on the continent. #FossilFriday
These are figures I ordered that I finally got in the mail today! Left is Gwangi from The Valley of Gwangi, right is the Ymir from 20 Million Miles to Earth.
Has anyone ever tried to make For Honor's cover art, but with the warriors as historically accurate as possible? That would be really cool.
Now, a small bone I have to pick. As interesting as these findings are, how do these authors expect to reasonably have any evidence of interaction between Smilodon and humans within a timeframe that is a geological *blink of an eye*?
A recent study found that Smilodon fed on a wide variety of megafauna at Salto de Piedra. It was an apex predator, focusing almost exclusively on megafauna.
It was once proposed that humans tried to domesticate Myotragus as it went extinct, on the basis of horns that were seemingly clipped off. It’s more likely this was the result of taphonomy, including other Myotragus gnawing on the horns of dead ones.
Carnotaurus had a plan. It worked, but he didn't completely think it through.
At the Academy of Natural Sciences near where I work, there are stuffed specimens of passenger pigeons, great auks, and other extinct/probably extinct birds on display, and it always feels like the closest thing to an actual grave for them.
This same source also mentions how wolves might be able to smell moose with necrotic mandibles or decaying teeth from actinomycosis, allowing them to sniff out more vulnerable prey.
Wolves have actually been observed riding on the backs of moose that they hunt. At least some of the time, this seems to be done when the moose in water.
I looked through the hatchling tyrannosaurid paper. For what it’s worth, the mention of Haversian remodeling in the leg bones (suggesting precocial locomotion) is consistent with a BMIT abstract by Eric Snively that I came across years ago. New to me is the tooth wear.
Supposedly Rex from Toy Story is based on the Dino Riders toy. Looking at them side by side, I definitely believe it.