Producer: Popular Science China
Producer: Hui Junbo
Producer: Computer Network Information Center, Chinese Academy of Sciences
introduction
In the era when dinosaurs dominated the land, the ocean was also full of dangers. Throughout the Mesozoic period, from the beginning of the Triassic to the end of the Cretaceous Period, there were various terrible marine reptiles that competed in the ocean, staging one scene after another amazing hymns of life. Among the countless overlords of the Mesozoic Dynasty who once dominated the oceans, there was an animal that appeared on Earth at the end of the reptile era, and would oust all the powerful opponents that appeared before it and dominate the Cretaceous oceans. As a result, it was forced to withdraw from the stage of history along with most of its contemporaries because of a sudden catastrophe. It is the "great animal from Maastricht, the Netherlands" - the dragon.
Figure 1: Famous biologist and anatomy home weiye.
Huge jawbone
Each fossil has a special story, but when it comes to the experience of bone fossil discovery, the dragon may be said to be the most legendary of all ancient creatures.
It all starts with the place of Maastricht. Maastricht is located in the Netherlands, where there is a St. Peter's Hill, which is a rich chalky mine, and as workers mined, the various fossils buried in the mine gradually became known. Hoffman, a Dutch military doctor who lived nearby, was very interested in these fossils, often buying fossils of various creatures from miners. He had been eager to find a fossil that was precious and important enough to expand his collection. It was in 1774 that he finally got his wish. On this day, the miners informed him that they had found a huge fossil of a jaw full of fangs that they had never seen before.
Excited, Hoffman went crazy when he saw the fossils, and he used a large amount of money to buy the rock wrapped in the fossils from the miners and invited some experts at the time to study it. What Hoffman doesn't know, though, is that the story about the fossil and his troubles are just beginning.
Figure 2: Painting of a scene of miners discovering fossils of a dragon
The value of the fossil = 600 bottles of fine wine
As the saying goes, "Piaf is innocent, but he is guilty", and Hoffman's fossil soon attracted the covetousness of others. The owner of the mine, a priest named Godin, believed that the fossil was excavated from his mine and deserved to belong to him, so he took the Hoffman military doctor to court. As a result, under the pressure of the church, the fossil was sentenced to Father Godin, and poor Hoffman tried his best but was busy in vain.
Father Godin, who got the fossil, also built a chapel for the fossil and placed the fossil in it. But in 1795, as Napoleon's army swept across the continent, Father Godin could not keep it. The French army captured Maastricht during the war, and the French commander specifically ordered that the church where the fossils were placed should not be destroyed. Father Godin, on the other hand, sent someone to hide the fossils, hoping to hide them from the French.
Unexpectedly, the commander of the French army also specially offered a reward for this fossil, and the bounty for this fossil was 600 bottles of fine wine! The French soldiers, who liked to drink, immediately exploded, and within two days several soldiers came to collect the fossils.
Fig. 3: Fossil jaws of Hoffmann's dragon, now preserved in the Natural History Museum in Paris
Rising rookies
After the fossils fell into the hands of the French, they were transported to Paris, where they were analyzed and studied by the famous anatomy home Vier. It was not until 1822 that the fossil, known as the "gigantic animal from Maastricht", was officially named "Mosasaurus of the Meuse River".
After the continuous research and discovery of paleontologists, we can now understand some details about the time when the dragon lived on Earth. This giant marine reptile did not evolve from a small land lizard until the last twenty million years of the Mesozoic Era, adapted to the ocean at an astonishing rate and rapidly specialized. They gradually grow, and the largest dragon can reach 20 meters long! Cruising in the oceans of the late Cretaceous period, the plesiosaurs and plesiosaurs that once dominated the oceans were all ousted from their thrones.
Figure 4: Fossils of Platts neptunosaur, one of the most famous species of the diplodocus. In the upper right is the skeleton of a dusk bird.
The last overlord
When the dragon appeared in the ocean in the late Cretaceous period, the old ocean overlords of the Mesozoic Era, the plesiosaurs and the upper dragons, gradually gave up their status as the top predators in the ocean, and the ichthyosaurs that had been dominant in the ocean since the Triassic period had long since declined. As an extremely successful marine reptile, the dragons are well deserved to climb to the apex of the marine food chain. Unfortunately, just when the dragons ruled in the ocean, their good days were completely ended by an asteroid from the universe. Along with them, about 75% of the world's species, including dinosaurs and pterosaurs, were brought to an end, and we can only appreciate the masculinity of the last Mesozoic overlord from fossils today.
Figure 5: Fossil head bone of Heino dragon head preserved in Brussels, Belgium. Heynodosaurus was the largest of the plesiosaurs.
Image Source:
Figure 1:
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Cuvier-1769-1832.jpg
Figure 2:
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:MosasaurDiscovery.jpg
Figure 3:
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Mosasaurus.jpg
Figure 4:
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Ichthyosaurus_Smithsonian.jpg
Figure 5:
https://zh.wikipedia.org/wiki/File:Hainosaurus_bernardi.JPG
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