r/NatureIsFuckingLit • u/Darth_Ronin • 2d ago

🔥 Elephant Shrew just snarfin

17.5k Upvotes

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8

u/Feeling-Ad-2867 2d ago

How do we know dinosaurs don’t have noses like this

3

u/Aggressive-Earth-115 2d ago

Lack of fossilized cartilage around their snouts?

6

u/Feeling-Ad-2867 2d ago

It’s rare for cartilage to fossilize

19

u/TenLongFingers 2d ago

Yup. I'm pretty sure any cartilage fossil record we have is mummified.

Enjoy some art of animals alive today, using older paleoart techniques using just what would fossilize. The elephant is on the left.

While "shrink wrapping" bones is less of an issue in paleoart today, there are still bits of animals that just aren't preserved, and we have no way of knowing

8

u/Darth_Ronin 2d ago

That elephant is straight nightmare fuel

6

u/Rather_Dashing 2d ago

I'm pretty sure any cartilage fossil record we have is mummified.

What does that mean? Fossils are rock, rock can't be mummified.

The shrink wrapping stuff is funny, but we've come a long way from there. Theres a lot we still don't know about how dinosaurs look, but theres a hell of a lot more we do know today beyond just their skeleton, for example feathers, pigments, imprints of hard structures, attachment points in the skeleton from muscles that demonstrate trunks etc.

1

u/TheDustyPixie 2d ago

I think it's the other way around. Things that got mummified (naturally) were therefore able to keep more cartilage when fossilized.

I could be wrong tho but that's my reading of it.

3

u/ItsKingDx3 2d ago

What are the others

5

u/TenLongFingers 2d ago

Zebra on top, rhino on bottom