Author Dragon Sunflower
If you want to choose the continent with the worst natural environment on the earth, I believe many friends will vote for the Antarctic continent, because this continent is covered with ice and snow all year round, the average temperature is below minus 20 degrees Celsius, and there are often blizzards in the inland areas. Few creatures can survive in such an environment, and even humans rarely explore the inland areas of the Antarctic continent. However, according to the theory of continental drift, Antarctica was not in what the geographical Antarctic is today hundreds of millions of years ago.
In other words, the land that is now barren may have bred many lives in the distant past, and the mere discovery of living creatures or biological remains in inland areas can prove this theory. Coincidentally, an astronomical geography enthusiast in the United States used Google Earth software to discover a biological skeleton in an inland area of the Antarctic continent, and put the found pictures on social platforms, which caused many netizens to watch for a time. People are wondering, what exactly is this creature?
Could it be that this mysterious creature was a prehistoric creature?
The foreign netizen named "MrMBB333" posted mysterious pictures found on Google Earth on social platforms and revealed that the skeleton of the creature was found about 80 kilometers from the coast of Antarctica. The post has received the attention of more than 40,000 netizens just a few hours after its publication, and everyone has been talking about the real identity of the creature's skeleton. It can be seen from the picture that this is a creature with a long body length, and according to netizens, its body length is about 3.8 to 6 meters.
Moreover, no other biological skeletons appeared around the skeleton, which further increased the mystery of the creature. What kind of creature is it? At the same time as posting the picture, netizens expressed their judgment that it was a prehistoric reptile. From the overall situation of the animal skeleton, its limbs are relatively short, and it has a long vertebrae and coccyx, which does meet the main characteristics of reptiles. Some netizens speculate along this line of thinking, thinking that it may be some undiscovered prehistoric species.
There is also a school of thought on the Internet that the skeleton looks like a dinosaur skeleton, and according to archaeological research, dinosaurs more than 200 million years ago were also reptiles, and later evolved species that moved in other ways. Beyond that, the most agreed view among the many speculations is that the creature is a crocodile. First of all, the crocodile is a reptile, and secondly, the skeleton is indeed similar to the skeleton of a modern crocodile. If the creature is really a crocodile, then it may be the ancestor of crocodiles, and it is unlikely to be a modern crocodile.
Because the place where the skeleton of the mysterious creature was found was far away from the Antarctic scientific research base, it was basically impossible for the scientific expedition personnel to find the biological skeleton according to the location sent by the netizens. This means that no one can prove whether the information posted by the netizen is true, even if the netizen does not create rumors, the mysterious biological skeleton cannot be confirmed in the short term.
What causes the increasing number of "death zones" in Antarctica?
The harsh climatic environment mentioned above makes it difficult for humans to go deep into the interior of the Antarctic continent for investigation, but the factors that lead to the harsh climate environment in the Antarctic region are not only natural factors, but also the impact of human activities. As early as 2006, the United Nations Environment Programme released the 2006 Global Environment Outlook Yearbook at an international conference, which pointed out that the number of marine "dead zones" in the world has exceeded 200, and the Antarctic region has also seen dead zones.
The so-called death zone refers to the low-oxygen or hypoxic zone, where humans discharge domestic sewage, agricultural sewage and industrial sewage into the ocean, causing the algae in the ocean to obtain sufficient nutrients and grow wildly. The growth of algae seizes most of the dissolved oxygen in the water and blocks the oxygen in the atmosphere from dissolving into the water, thus creating a dead zone. Once a dead zone has emerged in a sea area, the fish, shrimp and shellfish in that area will not survive.
At the same time, the report points out that since the 1970s, the number of dead zones on the planet has been increasing, and the area has been increasing. The emergence of dead zones not only has a huge impact on human fisheries, but also directly threatens the survival of many marine life. UNEP has therefore long called on all countries to curb the discharge of sewage into the oceans and prevent more marine dead zones. In addition, marine dead zones can affect the survival of amphibians, such as penguins and seals in Antarctica.
Penguins and seals are also vertebrates, and if the skeleton of a mysterious creature found inland belongs to modern life, it is likely to be a penguin or seal.
Even if the Antarctic environment is extremely harsh, they can still survive
After investigation, the average annual temperature in the Antarctic region is -60 degrees Celsius to minus 80 degrees Celsius, and there are 12-level blizzards raging on land from time to time. Except for the possible presence of microorganisms in the oceans under the ice, there are few other organisms. But there are two species of animals that are very tenacious, and they have lived on this desolate continent for generations. The first animal is the emperor penguin, an adult individual with a height of more than 90 cm and a weight of 50 kg.
The signature feature of the emperor penguin is the growth of a yellowish coat under the neck, which is also a gradient color. Many people are curious about how penguins cope with the harsh climate environment, according to the expedition team, when the snowstorm comes, the emperor penguins will not hide, but stand in groups to face the wind, very close to each other. Antarctica's blizzards usually last for months, so the emperor penguin colony takes turns standing on the outer layer to withstand the fierce cold winds.
The second animal is the Weddell seal, which chooses to live in the water below the ice in winter to escape blizzards on land. Even so, Weddell seals need to breathe, and they usually use their teeth to scrape the ice surface of the sea for a chance to breathe, which means that their teeth suffer severe wear and tear, which eventually causes them to be unable to prey and eat properly. As a result, many Weddell seals leave this world at a young age and would not have lived in such a harsh environment if they had a choice.
Compared with these creatures living in adversity, the living environment of human beings is obviously much better, but a considerable number of people do not know how to think of danger in times of peace, and in order to pursue benefits and convenience, they will not hesitate to destroy the environment. A biological scientist once said that the harm done by humans to the natural world will eventually be returned to humans, and I wonder if the end of human beings will eventually be the same as the mysterious skeleton in the Antarctic inland.