16 amazing photos: extinct animals are real hardcore (17 photos)

Amazing pictures of what the past of our planet and its inhabitants looks like.





We can only guess what our planet will look like a few million years from now, but we know exactly what it looked like in the past. This knowledge is amazing, and a few centuries ago such finds gave rise to legends about monsters. However, here we cannot help but argue with our ancestors: once upon a time the planet was really inhabited by real monsters, and in general, in the past it was a tough and amazing world that we never cease to discover.

Fossils of crinoids found in UK rivers



Thagomizer is the name given to the spikes on the tails and sometimes on the body of dinosaurs, and is a name from a comic book

The thorns were named this way as a joke in the comic strip The Far Side back in 1982, and very quickly the word “thagomizer” migrated to paleontology: the fact is that the thorns did not have a name before.





This plant is Proterocladus antiquus, a 1 billion year old algae that may be the ancestor of all plants.



Neanderthal with his child: a very realistic reconstruction of an ancient man



10 million years ago a turtle could have swallowed a man and not even realized it



A dinosaur with two heads that lived 120-145 million years ago

An amazing find from China: the existence of two-headed animals is generally very rare, so it is incredible that such a creature was also fossilized.



Mammoth tusk found in northern Siberia



Comparison of skull sizes between Sarcosuchus and Nile crocodile



Last photo of the Barbary lion, now considered extinct in the wild, 1924.



Leg of an Argentinosaurus that lived in South America



What if megalodons were swimming in the ocean now?



Tyrannosaurus during a meal: reconstruction at the Chicago Museum



Another monster from the past - brachiosaurus



This is what our ancient ancestor, Homo Erectus, looked like in different parts of the planet



More fossils of crinoids, beautiful and terrible at the same time



Quetzalcoatlus is the largest flying creature in the history of the planet

It weighed about 200-250 kg, and its wingspan exceeded ten meters.