According to the British "Sun" reported on January 7, a netizen who likes to use Google Maps to find mysterious existence found the remains of an unknown creature in the antarctic inland.
● Skeletons of unidentified creatures found on Google Maps.
●This is the case after enlarging.
Antarctica is not only the coldest continent on Earth, but also the most windy continent, with winds of magnitude 8 or above blowing all year round. In the interior of Antarctica, there are no plants and no animals, and there is no sign of life except for the human expedition team.
All antarctic animals live off the Antarctic coast, so in general it is impossible to have animal skeletons in the Antarctic inland.
<h1 class="pgc-h-arrow-right" >" Of course, Antarctica isn't as cold as it's ever been. </h1>
Around 40 million to 50 million years ago, during the Eocene, antarctica at that time resembled the coast of modern California due to the high concentration of carbon dioxide that kept the entire planet surrounded by the greenhouse effect.
Scientists at Yale University studied two isotopes in ancient shell fossils whose concentrations depend on environmental temperature indicators during the time of shell growth. Scientists calculated that the temperature of the sea waters in the Antarctic sea at that time was 22 °C, while the maximum temperature of the Antarctic continent could reach 17 °C.
Scientists have found fossils of dinosaur eggs in Antarctica, as well as frog fossils.
Netizens who found the skeleton of the unknown creature on Google Maps believed that it was most likely the skeleton of an ancient creature and uploaded the findings to social media.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >" but in reality, this is the skeleton of a seal. And there's a 90 percent chance that it's the skeleton of a crab-eating seal. </h1>
There are a total of 6 species of seals in Antarctica. Only 4 of these species are true Antarctic seals. The four species are leopard seals, Weddell seal Ross seals, and crab-eating seals. The remaining two species are the Ruhr seal and the southern elephant seal, which only occasionally make a turn to the South Pole.
Among them, the crab-eating seal is the largest in the Antarctic seal population and the largest population of seals in the world, and it is estimated that there are at least 7 million crab-eating seals in the world.
Although crab-eating seals bear the name of crab-eaters, they do not eat crabs, and their main diet is krill, octopus and fish. Krill make up more than 95 percent of the crab-eating seal diet, and their teeth look like combs to filter the tiny krill.
●Crab-eating seals replace the filter feeding function of whale whiskers with their teeth.
Compared to seals in the Arctic, seals in antarctica have longer forelimbs.
Because the teeth of crab-eating seals are very special, they cannot bite anything particularly hard, which prevents them from making holes in the ice, so they often take advantage of the breathing holes of Wild seals.
Crab-eating seals can dive to depths of 430 meters, but swim at a speed of only 15 kilometers per hour. Crab-eating seals usually flock to a cohort, with large populations of up to 1,000.
It is also because they are not good at digging holes in ice, so their ability to travel under the ice is relatively poor.
In order to quickly move from one feeding point to another, crab-eating seals travel on land.
<h1 class= "pgc-h-arrow-right" >" Crab seals move very fast on land, more than 25 km/h. </h1>
It's 70% faster than they swim in the water.
Crab-eating seals twist their bodies like snakes to advance, can go deep into the interior of antarctica, sometimes get lost, and because they are lost and cannot return to the sea, they become a corpse.
Because the Antarctic Dry Valley is not covered by snow and ice, many seal skeletons and mummies can be seen exposed to the surface.
In 1903, Britain's greatest polar explorer, Robert E. Lee, was killed in a position to play in the field. Scott's first discovery was that there were live seals and seal carcasses in the Antarctic inland.
In 1967, scientists found six dried Weddell seals and 115 mummies of crab-eating seals in the Wright and Victoria Valleys.
Sterling in 1968. Rudolf reported that near the mountain, 113 kilometers from the sea, there was a live crab-eating seal.
In January 2009, the carcass of a leopard seal was found at the foot of Garwood Valley, located 141 metres above sea level, 5.63 km from the nearest ice sheet and 50 km from the nearest ice-free sea.
<h1 class = "pgc-h-arrow-right" > actually has not only seal bones in the Antarctic interior, but also the bones of penguins. </h1>
The most numerous of these are crab-eating seals, which is because they are not only numerous, but also travel longer distances on the road.
As for why the animals got lost and couldn't return to the ocean, scientists thought they might have contracted some kind of virus or developed some kind of disease, but this factor is not very certain at this time.
The transformation of seal carcasses in the Antarctic inland from mummies to white bones proves that even in the harshest environment on Earth, microorganisms such as bacteria live.
Seal carcasses in mcMurdo's dry valley may also reflect the relative abundance of each species, according to which scientists estimate the ratio of crab-eating seals, Weddell seals and leopard seals in Antarctica to be 25:4:1. There are so many skeletons in the Antarctic interior that need not be fussed about.