Showing posts with label giant. Show all posts
Showing posts with label giant. Show all posts

Giant Rats Found in East Timor

We all know that rats can get really big, particularly when they eat "quality" garbage left by humans. Yet, city people have never seen the giant rats found in East Timor. Africa was thought to be the home of large rats, but this is not the case.
Giant rats found in east timor
No less that seven new species of large rats have been observed in East Timor. If you can image one 10 times larger than your "domestic" beast, you are getting close to the mark. The giants weigh about 5 kilograms.

There is evidence that ancient man actually ate the rats on Timor as far back as 50,000 years ago. This was before tools were introduced from Asia. It seems that they were hunted then thrown onto the fire to cook because there were no cooking pots.

The study aims to find out what animals were like before humans arrived there from Southeast Asia. Were they large then? It is known that mammals actually get smaller when isolated on an island.
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BIG MAMMAL
 #giant #rat #animal #mammal #science #discovery #found #new #species  
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Man Lived Alongside Giant Lizards

Humans lived alongside giant lizards. Some would say we still do. Doesn't the Komodo dragon still exist in Indonesia? Australian Aboriginals did have to fear an attack by giant killer lizards. A fossil has been found in north Queensland near Rockhampton.
Human hunting a giant Megalania monitor Megalania prisca Komoda lizard
Scientists are sure that giant lizards existed on this continent. The fossil is only about one-centimeter square. Radiocarbon dating shows the animal is 50,000 years old.  Giant lizards were thought to go back to 80,000 years.

Debate continues whether the lizard is a Komodo or a giant Megalania monitor, Megalania prisca. This is not that important. It does show that Man coexisted with a very large dangerous reptile. It would have made life difficult during the day for ancient humans. Dragons cannot run as fast but they do a good job of ambush, pouncing on unsuspecting prey.
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GIANT KILLER LIZARD LIVED WITH HUMANS
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Millions of years ago kangaroos were much different than they are today. The sthenurine kangaroo once dominated Australia. It became extinct only 30,000 years ago when the maga fauna era ended. They were two meters tall, much too large to hop. It is surmised that they walked like humans.

Their face was flat and they looked like a rabbit with a large tail. They were a side branch of the kangaroo family. The main line continued to become modern kangaroos. Procoptodon golliah grew to three meters tall and weighed about 240kg.

Scientists had assumed that they hopped like modern kangaroos. The most obvious conclusion is usually the best, but in this case it was wrong. Their bone structure points to them walking. Having a large tail was a bonus: it improved balance.

The mega fauna period has been painted as a time of happy giants. For humans it would have been frightening. These oversized creatures would have been difficult to hunt. Indeed, humans probably had a policy of keeping their distance. Just because most did not eat meat does not mean they weren't dangerous.
 Funny Animal Pictures by Ty Buchanan 
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New Clam in Australia

There are many kinds of clams, some of them very large. The bigger ones are classified as "giant" clams. All were thought to be known. However, a new species has been identified. Examples were found at Ningaloo in Western Australia and near the Solomon Islands.

The reason it has been overlooked for so long is because it is very similar to Tridacna maxima, which is quite common. There are a plethora of colors including yellow, green, brown and blues. They are in many different shades of these main colors.

Clams produce large amounts of edible meat for human consumption. Their shells are also valuable for displays. Many species are under threat. They cannot run away and hide from divers and snorkelers. Two similar species in the same region means numbers for each are lower than first thought.
Conservation by Ty Buchanan
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Aboriginals Did Not Wipe Out Megafauna

The argument continues over whether humans were responsible for the extinction of megafauna. Giant emus, large kangaroos, marsupial lions and diprodons were destroyed by Aboriginals in Australia according to new research. This claim is based on fungi in dung of herbivores. For 130,00 years, despite dry periods, charcoal and pollen levels in dung remained the same until Aboriginals arrived. This means that climate change was not responsible for the extinction of megafauna 40,000 years ago.

There is a problem with this. When Captain Cook arrived in Australia the Aboriginal population was extremely low. Forty thousand years ago there would have been only a few hundred thousand of them. How could this low number possibly destroy all of the large animals? Some megafauna would have survived in regions where Aboriginals did not go. Australia is a very large continent.

It is claimed that when the megafauna died out the vegetation changed with more fires, and eucalyptus forests spread out killing off rainforests. Spores in dung is flimsy evidence to support a claim that human arrival led to the demise of megafauna. Rainforests being taken over by eucalyptus sounds very much like climate change. Furthermore. prevailing evidence shows no human remains among megafauna fossils.

Saying that the dung research proves humans destroyed giant animals is still not proven beyond doubt. Gavin Prideaux's announcement that the study "supported mounting evidence that climate change was not to blame" is premature.
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Paleontology
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Giant Ants in Ancient North America

Big insects once roamed the US. They were very big. Ants were the size of small birds 50 million years ago. They are thought to have crossed the arctic land bridge that once existed between Europe and the US. The Green River site in Wyoming has given up many new finds in the past.

Bruce Archibald of Simon Fraser University in British Columbia noted that the fossil was similar to one found in Germany. Only the queen of the Dorylus wilverthi species of ant living today reaches this size. Fittingly, the new ant has been named Titanomyrma lubei. Louis Lube found the specimen. While this ant is big for North America, big ants probably lived in other parts of the world because large fossils of other creatures have been found there.

Large ants only live a tropical climate in the present so North America was tropical millions of years ago. It is a mystery how they crossed the temperate Arctic region then. For brief periods this area became quite warm, up to 8 degrees Celsius, though not tropical. Bursts of carbon dioxide into the atmosphere from sediment was the culprit. With two sources for ancient giant ants now known it may be possible to identify where they originated.
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Science
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Humans Wiped Out Australia's Megafauna

Humans destroy more things in the environment than climate change. This is especially the case in Australia where over the last 50,000 years people have wiped out the county's megafauna. Before Aboriginals arrived flightless birds, large reptiles and giant marsupials lived a carefree existence.

Humans slaughtered the large animals in a very short period of time. More accurate dating of bones shows that megafauna died out abruptly. When the giant creatures were in large numbers there is no evidence of human tools. After the Diprotodon, Australia's largest marsupial, large kangaroos and flightless birds died out stone tools appeared. Accurate dating shows they did not exist at the same time even though they were found together at certain locations. When humans became settled the large animals were gone. The odd thing is that humans and megafauna must have coexisted for at least 5,000 years. But this is a very narrow window to find evidence of both living side by side.

This gives weight to the theory that the arrival of modern Man in the Americas caused the demise of the mammoth. Though there is a problem with the American story. Megafauna "ruled" during the ice age which occurred 12,000 years ago. Its seems that when the ice ages ended life changed for the large animals. The climate was then well and truly against the survival of mammoths, short-faced bears, giant bison and sabor-toothed tigers. Some megafauna, however, continued to survive in Kansas, and Nebraska after the ice age period. The skeleton of a giant beaver has been found dating from 10,000 years ago. So Man could still be the culprit.
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