A 240 million-year-old "Chinese dragon" was found in Guizhou? But in the history of paleontological restoration, there have been big blunders

A complete dinosaur fossil dating back about 240 million years was discovered in Guizhou, which is expected to reveal more secrets of the dinosaur era. However, in the process of paleontological restoration, there have been many misunderstandings and mistakes. These misunderstandings and mistakes are not only interesting, but also reflect the twists and turns and difficulties of scientific exploration. Let's take stock together!

"Attention all units, attention all units, high energy preparation ahead!"

Look at the bones and guess what animal this is?

Player No. 1

Look at those ferocious fangs.

Japanese cartoonist Yusuke Murata once drew it like this

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Player No. 2

Look at the shape of the skull.

Some people think it is a Cyclops

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Player No. 3

This animal was once assembled into a "sea snake" by a curious person.

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However, these speculations can only be described as a "major rollover scene."

(Want to know what animals they are? We will reveal it at the end of this article~)

In this case, can I doubt... that the ancient biological restoration images we have seen... may also contain mistakes?

Next, let’s cosplay as a “famous detective” and see how these lifelike ancient creatures came into being.

To restore ancient creatures, first pose them

Incomplete fossils,

The buried site,

Sometimes there are only footprints...

Paleontologists want to restore

A history that goes back tens or even hundreds of millions of years.

When restoring ancient organisms,

The only "props" that can be used are fossils.

The more complete the fossil,

It was restored to be closer to its original appearance.

But,

In the long-term geological changes,

It is very difficult to dig up complete biological fossils.

Normally, we are lucky to have 30% of the skeleton preserved to this day. Often, we may only get a small piece of bone and teeth, or even many organisms do not even have a complete fossil.

But scientists still restored them, turning them from cold fossils into "flesh and skin" creatures.

The mammoth that lost its nose and ears

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A sea-climbing plesiosaur with a neck that could almost be tied into a knot

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This is what the dinosaurs in the early movie "Atomic Monster" looked like

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How is this done?

This brings us to an important law in paleontological research - the law of organ correlation, which states that an organism is a unified whole, the structure and function of each component are interconnected and consistent, and if one part changes, other parts will also change accordingly.

In other words, if one organ in an animal is adapted to a certain function, other organs must also be adapted accordingly.

Thus, by examining a claw, a shoulder blade, a leg bone, a rib, or any other bone, scientists can determine what type of animal it is a part of and can infer the characteristics of other parts of the animal.

Take the dinosaurs we are most familiar with as an example: when dinosaur fossils are discovered, they are usually scattered and all over the ground, and scientists must first assemble them.

First, each cleaned fossil must be traced, and then they are pieced together to create a pose that matches the characteristics of their species.

For example, this

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Dinosaur specimens at the China Science and Technology Museum

The tallest one is the Anagawa Street Dragon

In this step, if the fossil is well preserved, the proportions can be measured directly to create a skeletal sketch of the creature's standing posture.

If the fossil is not completely preserved, or there is a lack of sufficient postcranial skeletal fossil material, it is necessary to expand the reference range and use other species within the same genus, closely related species, or organisms with the closest morphology in order to restore the skeletal morphology to the greatest extent possible.

After posing,

The next step is to add muscles to the skeleton

The restoration of muscles mainly relies on modern knowledge of animal anatomy. The muscle structure of the restorations of ancient vertebrates we see today is mostly based on reference to living animals. For example, when reconstructing herbivorous dinosaurs, elephants and rhinos are used as reference.

In fact, although the flesh of ancient creatures has long been dissolved, it is not completely gone. Many of the depressions and protrusions on the bones are traces left by muscles.

By finding all these traces on the assembled skeleton and matching them one by one, we can deduce the approximate muscle direction of the skeleton.

When restoring the muscles of the saber-toothed tiger, considering that it needed to use its jaws, canine teeth and forelimbs to suppress large prey, its masseter muscles as well as the muscles of the neck and limbs must have been well developed, and the distribution of these muscles would match the depressions and protrusions on the corresponding bones.

When restoring whales, the appearance of muscles is also inferred from the needs of movement:

In order to support the up and down movement of the whale's head, it must have a set of strong muscles that connect from the occipital part of the skull to its spine. This muscle probably looks like this

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Dolphin's neck

Image source: Whales and Dolphins

So, what color are ancient creatures?

Even if we knew the shapes of all ancient creatures, their colors would remain a mystery.

However, scientists can always find some clues. They use the extremely thin wax layer, grooves, seams and melanosomes on the surface of animals to compare with modern animals and reconstruct or infer the color of ancient animals.

For example: by comparing the dermal pigment cells (xanthophyll, iridophyll and melanophore) preserved in calcium phosphate in snake fossils with the number and position of pigment cells in existing reptiles, their true color can be obtained.

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Miocene Colorful Jaw Snake Fossils

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The restored body color of the colorful snake

So why do we mostly see dark skin?

This is because melanocytes are more stable than other pigment cells, which leads scientists to often paint extinct animals black and brown. Sometimes, even if there are no melanocytes preserved in fossils, people still habitually choose black and brown.

In fact, the bones, teeth, hooves, and horns of mammals can provide information about different aspects of them, including diet, body shape, habitat, etc. Researchers can also judge the body color of organisms from the preservation of complete fossils, ancient cave paintings, living environment, individual development process, etc.

Fossils of members of the mammoth-woolly rhinoceros fauna in the Northeast Plain of my country

Of course, with the advancement of science and the discovery of some key fossils, the previous restoration map is likely to be overturned.

For example, scholars a hundred years ago would not have thought that dinosaurs would be covered with feathers today.

An artist's reconstruction of a gorgeous Yutyrannus

(Brain Choo drawing)

The revision of biological restoration pictures brings us closer to the lost world that was once alive. And what shows us all this is the paleontological researchers who travel in the wilderness and work deep in the laboratory, using their hands to recreate the ancient and mysterious animal kingdom for us.

After reading this, does your favorable impression of paleontologists increase? Do you also want to swim in the vast ocean of paleontology?

Learn about paleontology. Although there are not many universities that offer paleontology majors directly at the undergraduate level, such as Peking University and Shenyang Normal University, in fact, many universities' geology majors also involve paleontology knowledge.

On the one hand, this discipline conducts comprehensive research on the origin, evolution and extinction of ancient organisms, as well as paleogeography and paleoecology from a macro perspective; on the other hand, it uses new methods such as fossil sections, CT scanning and computer modeling analysis to study the body structure, individual development and metabolism of ancient organisms from a micro perspective.

Of course, there is also the paleontological restoration that we are talking about today. Maybe one day, your research results on paleontology will allow us to see a more vivid ancient era!

Guess the animal by looking at the skeleton? Answer revealed

Contestant No. 1 is a hippopotamus who looks very silly without opening his mouth

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The second player is not a "Cyclops" but a long-nosed elephant

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The third contestant is the ancestor of whales, Basilosaurus

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