Top 10 Extinct Mammal's Fossil Records

Top 10 Extinct Mammal's Fossil Records

Life on planet earth is written down in stone. Millions of years before a single human ever put their feet on the ground, the continents were full of great mammals, of every possible shape and size. Their empire fell millions of years ago, and yet its burst forth for us in some of the most spectacular events ever documented in the fossil record. Join us for a journey backwards in time as we count the 10 most extinct mammals whose wonderful bones kept on influencing us and amazed us by their incredible strength.

Glyptodon

That animal was named Glyptodon, a lumbering giant herbivore which hunkered along South America in what's known as the Pleistocene age.The shell is really one of its most remarkable fossils too, as it looks more like a reptile than any other dinosaur that we have ever found, with a very thick shell, often intact all the way through. Because of this excellent preservation it has become an important archive for studies of mammalian adaptation.

Woolly Rhinoceros

Woolly rhino fossils are some of the most beautifully preserved remains from the Ice Age and some of the most spectacular finds at the end of the Pleistocene. There is just one piece of fossilized skin left on any creature that has ever lived. In Besides the mineral content of the bones, these perfectly preserved fossils tell us about thick skin, long hair and even massive horns. Their excellent preservation has meant that we can now look back through time in almost unparalleled detail at the anatomy and ecology of megafauna that managed to survive despite polar climates.

Sabre Tooth Lion

The mighty Saber toothed cat Smilodon would be missing from any list of extinct cats. Most people love tigers, but tigers are not known to get as large as known specimens of a proto tigre, a genus known for having canine teeth as long as a tiger. It has been recovered thousands of times and has its anatomy, social behaviour and hunting techniques described in detail. From this, we see that the morphologies represent those of an aggressive ambush predator that preyed on the large herbivore fauna of the day.

Frost Giants Mammoths

The world's greatest fossil record of this extinct coelacanth exists across the globe, but spectacular, complete specimens from Arctic beds are far and away the prettiest. So well preserved, we recently saw a very important scientific conversation about de-extinction center around these bones precisely because of how important a contribution to paleontology these fossils are.

Paraceratherium

the biggest land mammal who ever walked the planet Paraceratherium (rhino like) the largest land mammal to ever live Fenceposts stand just over 5m (16ft) at the shoulder and are found spread across Asia. It's a Herculean feat of vertebrate palaeontology that we were able to reconstruct this gigantic behemoth from its immense bones, and shows just how big mammalian life can get.

Thylacine

The Thylacine or Australian Wolf is another tragic example of what could have been, and evidence that extinction is not a relic of the past. Despite being released in the same year as the filming of Jurassic Park, this dog like marsupial predator is actually not some sort of fossil from the age of the dinosaurs. This beautifully illustrated record enables the story to be told in a unique way and is a truly remarkable conservation message in itself.

Leviathan

Its fossils were so large that when the first were found in 1860 in Alabama they were assumed to be a dinosaur. The full skeletons that have been recovered reveal to us a serpentine whale with toothsome jaws and short hind legs the remnants of a terrestrial propelling ancestry. This fossil marine mammal is a poster child for evolution, and was an astonishing proof of the evolution and history of mammals from land to water.

Irish Elk

The Irish Elk, Megaloceros, had the largest set of cervid antlers in history which can reach up to 4 metres (12 feet) in width. It also occurs in peat bogs (oxygen free depressions, as swamps are called) all over Europe, from which numerous lifelike skeletons that are intact after all that time have also been dug up. Allowing scientists to improve our understanding of its interdependency upon sexual selection, extreme anatomy and vulnerability to environmental change.

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Uintatherium

Around the time the dinosaurs went extinct, mammals began diversifying in a bunch of crazy directions. Uintatherium is one of the strangest of the predators. This huge (hippo sized) herbivore had three pairs of stubby horns on its skull, and sabre like long canine teeth. The remains of these early Eocene mammoths represent an evolutionary path not taken; a bizarre and beautiful fork in the mammalian family tree that has no extant (above ground) descendants.

Ground Sloth Mammoth 

Number one on our list is the Megatherium or Giant Ground Sloth. This was no tree hugging, slow empered sloth of modern times. It was a monster that walked on the sides of its short hind legs and was the size of an elephant. Its excellent fossil record contains many complete skeletons recovered from all over South America. Judging by the size and pattern of its bones, this was a formidable animal, perhaps one that could rear itself upon its hind legs to browse vegetation in the canopy, and most likely fully able to defend itself against whatever predator it managed to encounter in its own life. Geologically speaking, its fossil is young enough to still include skin and hair, therefore being one of the most fossils rich isn't it for this most interesting fossil mammal?

The Enduring Legacy in Stone

These are only ten of the prehistoric mammals that can give us a glimpse into a lost world that has been reconstructed from the development of its fossil record. Whether it is a frozen mammoth, or a tar-trapped Smilodon, each fossil find is another key puzzle piece in the history of life. Whilst adaptations in the environment around them will persist, these pieces educate us on adaptation, survival and inevitably, life's fragility. They are not only a brilliant illustration of the earth's mighty dynamic past, but also a remarkable reminder of life's magnificent evolution, culminating in the ownership of Planet Earth by creatures of the mammal tribe.