u/-ShinyPixels-

Parasaurolophus is probably in my top 10 favorite dinosaurs. That long name means "near crested lizard", because there was already a "Saurolophus" named earlier. The crest in question is a curved, tube-shaped extension of the skull and nasal bones. In this species (P. cyrtocristatus) that crest is strongly down-turned compared to the straighter crests seen in other varieties.

One of the more popular aspects of Parasaurolophus is that its crest could act as a resonating chamber for sound in the same way a trumpet does. This was likely a noisy dinosaur.

Art by Andrey Atuchin.

Ever see one of those dinosaurs with the big dome heads? Those are Pachycephalosaurs, literally meaning "thick headed lizards". For being a somewhat popular group of dinosaurs, they're very poorly known, being rare and often fragmentary fossils.

Last year, in 2025, paleontologists working in Mongolia found the most complete Pachycephalosaur so far with the new "Zavacephale". It's not very big, but a lack of fusion in the bones indicates it was not done growing when it died. The dome-shaped skulls of these dinosaurs have long been thought to be an adaptation for butting heads, similar to the curved horns of rams and goats.

Art by Kuzim.

Snakeflies get their name from their long bodies and predatory habits. These insects eat mostly mites, aphids, and the larvae of other bugs. The group first appeared in the Jurassic in Asia before spreading nearly worldwide in the Cretaceous.

Unfortunately, the K-Pg extinction hit snakeflies pretty hard and only cold-tolerant species survived into the Cenozoic era. Today, they are present in Europe, Asia, and North America, but generally avoid the hotter regions and prefer temperate woodland. I had never heard of snakeflies before I found this fossil and looked into them.

Literally what do I even put here, it's an ice cream cone snail with curvy spines, what do you want from me. I guess I could say that it's not a true snail and is thought to be more closely related to brachiopods. But even that is tough to know for sure. Cambrian animals just be like that.

Art from the Royal Ontario Museum.

Powered flight, where an animal can flap its wings to take off into the sky, is a pretty rare adaptation in the grand scheme of things. Much more common (and much biologically simpler) is the ability to passively glide or parachute down from a tree. This is what "flying squirrels" and other such "gliding" animals do today.

One of the first appearances of a gliding adaptation can be seen in the Permian-aged Weigeltisaurids. These early reptiles had long rods attached to their bellies forming a simple wing. They couldn't flap these wings due to a lack of proper muscle attachments, but they would've been great for avoiding fall damage. Could've used a bucket of water forsenScoots

Art by Nix Illustrations & Joschua Knuppe.

As every dinosaur fan knows, the oviraptorosaurs were historically thought to be egg eaters. "Oviraptor" literally means "egg thief". This idea came from the first specimen (not the one pictured here) being found next to a nest of eggs, presumably caught in the act of stealing them.

However, as more oviraptorosaur fossils were found, it became clear that these were actually the remains of dutiful parents protecting their own eggs. This fossil of the Mongolian genus Citipati preserves a parent (unknown whether its the mother or father) sitting on their nest in much the same way modern birds do. He or she likely died trying to save their unhatched babies from a sandstorm, which killed and covered them for us to find millions of years later. Tragic, but beautiful.

Art by Zhao Chuang.

Carnotaurus ("flesh-eating bull") is an awesome and fitting name for one of the coolest dinosaurs out there. It belonged to a group of dinosaurs called the abelisaurs which are identified by their blunt skulls and extremely reduced arms. In fact, Carnotaurus lacks an elbow joint completely, meaning its arms could only pivot at the shoulder.

This species is most famous for the two horns above its eyes. As you can see on the skull, the bones are thick and roughly textured implying there were much larger keratin sheaths covering them in life. How big these horns were, we may never know, as Carnotaurus is currently known from just a single specimen.

Art by Jacobb Bardense.

Pterosaurs have notoriously lightweight, fragile bones, and tiny ones like this are extremely vulnerable to being crushed or crumbling away into dust. Some pieces of this specimen fell apart when it was extracted, but luckily their impressions were left behind on the slab so the whole animal can still be seen.

This one belongs to a special group of pterosaurs called the anurognathids. They were small and fuzzy with uniquely short and round heads. They are often compared to bats for their similar adaptations.

Art by Zhao Chuang.

I try not to have a Cretaceous bias when picking out these posts but sometimes it's unavoidable. Even the underrated Cretaceous animals are cool. Like Protosphyraena, a medium-sized fish from oceans around the world. They featured some nasty looking teeth and a pointed rostrum on their face. While not identical to swordfish, they probably filled similar niches in the ocean.

Art by Baols.

Nectocaris was a small and oddly cute animal from the Cambrian Period. It was long considered one of the first cephalopods, the group that contains octopus and squid and other tentacled creatures. However, in 2025 a study found that it might actually be related to the arrow worms, a strange group of tiny, tube-shaped marine creatures that make up a significant amount of the plankton in the oceans.

3D model by TurboSquid.

Clams and other shellfish are probably the most common fossils. One of the biggest clams ever was the Mesozoic Inoceramus, which could reach 2 meters across. Some specimens of closely related species could get to 3 meters!

Their fossils sometimes have smaller molluscs and crustaceans attached to them, indicating their huge shells would have been a home for other species in life.

Art by Brian Engh.

99 posts before I did T. rex, the most famous fossil animal of all. Proud owner of both the best name and the coolest skull of all time, Tyrannosaurus was an absolute monster of a predator that terrorized western North America at the very end of the reign of dinosaurs. Its prey included dangerous herbivores like the horned Triceratops and the armored Ankylosaurus.

This specimen, named Stan, is the fifth most complete T. rex so far discovered and has the best preserved skull of all. Replicas of Stan's skull sit in museums all over the world as the perfect killing machine, with enough bite force to easily crush huge bones. Stan is thought to be a male individual due to its narrow pelvic cavity, but it is unknown if this method can accurately identify sex in Tyrannosaurs.

In 2020 Stan was sold at an auction to a private bidder for almost $32 million USD, at the time making it the most expensive fossil ever sold. It was later revealed that the buyer was the "Abu Dhabi Department of Culture and Tourism", and today Stan new sits in their lavish natural history museum in the UAE where few westerners can actually see it.

Art by Maurizio Morosan and Cindy Raggo.

An iconic species, the woolly mammoth was a large (although not THE largest) elephant that first evolved about 6 million years ago, lasted the entire "ice-age", and finally became extinct about 4,000 years ago. The last bastions of mammoths survived on islands near Siberia and the Bering Strait, with the mainland populations falling off much earlier.

Supremely adapted for the cold, these elephants were bulky and covered in layers of thick fur unlike most other species in their clade. They also had tiny ears and a very short tail to minimize heat loss.

Art from Prehistoric Planet: Ice Age.

No, that's not the name of a dark souls boss, it's the early dinosaur Eoraptor lunensis! This was among the very oldest dinosaurs known, living about 230 million years ago in the Triassic Period. It was found in a rocky canyon in Argentina known as The Valley of The Moon, hence the meaning of the name.

While its exact classification has moved around since its discovery in 1993, details of the skull and limbs suggest this little guy was a distant ancestor of the gigantic long-necked sauropods, the biggest animals to ever walk the Earth.

Art by BenkeArt.

Nothing too fancy today, just a very pretty bird fossil from the German Messel Pit, which has given me quite a few posts so far. This type of bird is called a rail, and while we don't have many of these where I live, they are a very common bird throughout wetlands in much of the world.

Weird underwater bug-looking fossil? Yeah it's probably from the Cambrian. This here is actually one of the bigger arthropods for this time, but it still only maxxed out at a little more than 20 centimeters long. Cambrian animals were pretty small...

Obviously its defining feature are the two long, ear-like flanges on the head. These seem to have been part of the carapace shell and might not have been floppy like they appear at first. What an odd creature.

Art by Hugo Salais.

Filler post? Kinda. I was busy today. Here's the funny looking early fish Sacabambaspis. The name doesn't mean anything special, it's just named after a village in Bolivia called Sacabamba.

This is a very early species of fish, before most of the modern adaptations appeared including jaws and paired fins. It looks so alien, especially with that weird smushed face.

Art by Huykhoi2407.

Sorry for no post yesterday. You can have a big dinosaur to make up for it.

Before T. rex, Acrocanthosaurus (="high spined lizard") was the ruler of Cretaceous North America. It belonged to a group of giant predatory dinosaurs called the Carcharodontosaurs (="shark toothed lizards") which were more common on the southern continents like South America and Africa, with this being the only currently recognized species from North America.

The most unique feature are those "high spines" along the back, creating a low sail in life much like the ones seen in Spinosaurs.

Art by PaleoPete.

From yesterday's super giant to today's teeny tiny! Heliopeltis was a small trilobite (an ancient class of marine bugs) with proportionally gigantic spines. It lived during the Devonian Period when armor-crushing fish were common, so it makes sense that they would evolve more drastic defenses. Who would wanna eat something that looks like this??

Art by Ginkgo Traces on Youtube (his newest video on Trilobites was the inspiration for this post)

Now THAT'S a big boy. Paraceratherium (a mouthful of Greek that means "near-horned beast") was likely the biggest mammal of all time behind the whales. It was a close relatives of the living rhinoceroses, but was hornless. While some other species were more modestly sized, Paraceratherium itself was a runaway giant, being both taller than a giraffe and heavier than the biggest mammoths (although some of the latter get very close).

Art by Gabriel Ugueto again lol.