Platybelodon - Platybelodon grangeri

Platybelodon. We're going back to the Miocene to find these relatives of elephants, particularly between 15 and 4 million years ago. As the name obviously suggests to those who know their greek, these guys had built-in shovels. Flat tusks, anyway. Where elephants have only one pair of long upper-jaw incisors jutting out from their upper jaws, Platybelodon had those and a pair of flattened incisors on their lower jaw.



Whether Platybelodon actually used those curious lower tusks to shovel up swampy wet muck or used their edges like a knife to slice off vegetation is up for debate, but they're pretty sharp items of dentition that were certainly capable of slicing through feed for that gigantic body.

While that's an impressive jaw on the image above, it doesn't quite show the sheer weirdness of the short & wide front tusks. For that, take a peek at the lower jaw, viewed from above.



Impressive, no?

Other than the built-in eating utensil, the rest of Platybelodon is similar to modern day elephants. Large solidly built plant munchers with short skulls - oh, and a short trunk.

Let's celebrate

Has it really been more fifteen months of publishing Creature365? No not really. OK, I can admit I started it fifteen months back, but as all too many scattered fragments of blogs attest, beginnings are all too simple and attractive and EASY.

Journeys of a thousand miles might start with a single footfall, but once that step's done you still need to start another then another, the attraction of the beginning wears off, and the hard work of reaching an ending ramps up and oh look shiny new beginning let's start something new!. Not terrifically productive, and all these pieces of beginnings don't just sit about online taking up space, but they're in my head fluttering about taking up room. The more I do this, the more I discover something wonderful and realise it's reminded me of another thing I started long ago and...

Zeno's dichotomy paradox be damned, I'll stop that level of self referential pondering and get on with it. Beginnings might be all too simple, endings hard yet fulfilling, but thinking in that false dichotomy misses the point that the fun is in the doing. All that cleverness means is that I wasn't enjoying the more factual writing I was attempting; being a touch more irreverent (or focusing just on the cool factor) is going to keep us both happier, dear reader. I'll give you interesting beasts and if you really need to know the minutiae of wear patterns on the lower pair of tusks of a platybelodon, you've got google.

And look! a new beginning - now you know platybelodon had four tusks!

Giant Isopod - Bathynomus giganteus

There are a few species of isopods (creatures in the same order as the woodlouse, or slater to Australians) that have been given the generic name Giant Isopod, but we'll concentrate on the biggest one here, simply because that's what we're all about.



As I mentioned above, Isopods are an order that includes arthropods related to pill bugs/woodlice/slaters, and the giant isopod is a deep-sea cousin of theirs. It lives down to a bit over 2Km below the surface, and is one of the ocean's scavengers; it lives on everything from dead fish, to whales and squid that have expired and dropped to the sea floor.



Much like some more familiar oceangoing arthropods, the Giant Isopods can be eaten, and are served much the same as lobster or crab. They're not a terribly common catch, but do come to the surface in nets of other seafood.



These guys are a rather old and stable species, appearing in fossils up to 160 million years back appearing very similar to today's creatures. One of those bodies that's found a long stable niche and been fine keeping on doing just what it does.

Patagonian Mara - Dolichotis patagonum

Another one for the multiple-creatures-rolled-into-one file*, the Patagonian Mara, which could also be named the kangaroobunnydeer. Walking like a deer, with feet a little more reminiscent of a kangaroo, and head & ears a little like a rabbit, it's another rodent. Like yesterday's porcupine, it's most closely related to guinea pigs and capybara, and more distantly related to more familiar rats, mice & hamsters.



Maras live in central & southern Argentina, and are one of the few mammals that are monogamous - Once they pair up, it's a bond for life. One pair will usually have two young each litter, three or four times a year. The fourth largest rodent, they're up to 75cm long and can weigh over 15kg.



These guys are seriously good runners, able to keep up a speed of 45km/h for more than a kilometre at a time.



* I feel I must note I'm writing from the perspective of an Australian who's more familiar with cats, dogs, horses and rabbits than the awesome variety of animals in the world. Insert your own mix of creatures if you need; if you're Argentinian, you'll just have to wait for a unique beast from elsewhere :).

African Crested Porcupine - Hystrix crystata

Here's another common one that most know by name, but mightn't have taken a close look at. Porcupines are, of course, spikey beasts that are often mixed up with hedgehogs and echidnas - unlike the others porcupines are rodents, and of the well-known rodents they're most closely related to guinea pigs and capybara.



The largest of the porcupines, Crested Porcupines can grow to almost a metre long and weigh near 30kgs. Their quills aren't the quills of the North American porcupine and its short sharp spikes interspersed with fur, but long black & white ringed spines that can grow up to half a metre long. The spines are anchored in deep muscled layers within the skin, and can be flared up or rattled depending how annoyed the little one is. Sufficiently annoyed, they make best use of their business end by launching backwards at attackers. Take a close look at the image above - that's not just a slightly spikey creature that relies on its spikes to be merely uncomfortable; its rear end is only a little less painful than diving head first into a pit of kitchen knives.

The business end, relatively laid back.

Along the top of their body down to the middle of their nose is the line of bristle that gives them their name, and it to can be voluntarily raised - just in case the massive spray of ringed needles out the other end wasn't warning enough.

The closely related Indian Crested Porcupine. Angry

The quills themselves aren't poisonous, and a porcupine can't throw them - but they're loosely enough connected that they're happy to leave a few stuck in any attacker. The spines are such an effective deterrent that a closely related Indian species has been known to fend off attacking tigers & leopards.



Not to put too fine a point on it, yes mating is performed very carefully. The quills can be voluntarily laid flat, and when receptive to a bloke porcupine, the female can lift her tail, which has no spines underneath, and lay it over the top of the spines on her back. As for giving birth, the littlest ones are born with short soft quills that only harden later.

Sue - Tyrannosaurus rex

Today's entry is a little different; instead of picking a particularly interesting species to take a look at, I'm going to concentrate on a single interesting individual of a well known common (if still interesting!) species, just because there's so much information on some of how she lived.



"Sue" is a Tyrannosaurus rex who was named after her discoverer, Sue Hendrickson. Sue the palaeontologist found Sue the Tyrannosaur almost by accident during the last days of a summer dig in 1990 in South Dakota. Sue ended up being the largest, best preserved, and most complete Tyrannosaurus rex yet found. While there's no certain evidence on the sex of Sue, some have suggested the shape of her pelvis lines up with other female reptiles who have adaptations to provide a passage for delivering eggs.

While there's an interesting story about the ownership and sale of the eventual Sue skeleton, I won't go into that here, instead I'll look at the injuries on the individual creature.

Due to the remarkable preservation of Sue, more clear info can be gathered than just her size. Lines of growth within her skeleton show she was old for a Tyrannosaur, having died after at least 28 years of life. Her bones bear the marks of a hard life that consisted of recovery after recovery from serious injury until her death, when she was quickly covered by sediment, preventing the usual scattering of bones.

Among the injuries discovered on Sue are:

A broken and healed humerus (upper arm bone)
A torn and healed tendon on one arm
Multiple broken and healed ribs on both sides (some ribs broken multiple times)
An embedded tooth fragment in one rib
Multiple skull injuries from bites and disease
Damaged tail vertebrae
Bony growths on vertebrae showing possible age-related back problems
Infections or other disease marks in jaw, arm and leg bones
Broken and healed legs on both sides

All of these except for one injury on the left of Sue's skull appear to have been breaks, bites and tears that she recovered from. It's unclear if the skull injury was caused after death or was the cause of Sue's demise, but it was just one in the lifetime of what was a very resiliant animal. Some of the injuries, such as broken fibulae, have been suggested as showing a level of social interaction beyond being isolated predators; being unable to hunt but having access to food from a mate or peer group would have helped survival after debilitating but recoverable injuries.

As for her size, Sue is larger than all previous Tyrannosaurus rex specimens. She stands 4 metres tall at the hips, and is a shade under 13 metres long. In life she would have weighed around 6.5 tonnes. The longest of her teeth was 30.5 centimetres in her 1.5m long skull.

Therizinosaurus - Therizinosaurus cheloniformis

Just for one feature, today's beast is a unique extinct one named Therizinosaurus. The first dinosaur in our exploration through the curious animals in the world, Therizinosaurus looks unlike most others for its bizarre claws, up to a metre long - indeed, it could have been labelled Freddykrugersaurus for the bizarre proportions of its hands.



First discovered in Mongolia in the late 1940s, it was the claws discovered first - they were guessed to be ribs of a turtle like creature. It wasn't until more fossils and limbs were discovered that it was clear they truly were claws, and northern chinese digs discovered substantial amounts of other Therizinosaurs, and the general body type could be determined.

Therizinosaur appears to be herbivorous, and to fill a similar niche to our first creature, the Giant Grount Sloth. Large, herbivorous, and with giant claws able to be used for grasping high and far strong vegetation. Weighing up to six tonnes and standing almost six metres tall, Therizinosaurus was a similar mass to African elephants, but far taller.