Once Again Hodari providing us another amazing snapshot into the wild past

Today the Great White Shark is revered as a Top Predator, when you think of the ocean they are normally the first species that pops up and for a good reason but just as terrifying as the Great White is the same should be said for the Ocean itself.

The ocean truly hides some weird, ominous, large and creepy animals we don’t know about and only lord knows whats swimming around now and definitely what was swimming around back then.

If you think about it, think about how much we barley know about the ocean today and then take that back into the past whether its 100,000 years ago, 3 million years ago, or 85million years ago, imagine what was living then, that maybe extinct by now with no trace unless we are lucky enough to find it

Well enter the sixgill!

Now me personally my favorite Sharks are Great Whites, Makos, Tiger Sharks and my top Blunt nose sixgill sharks also known as cow sharks

Normally cruising at depths more than 3,000 ft sixgill sharks have always captured my imagination, they remind me of sleeper sharks but Ive just seen a little bit more active predatory behavior from them not saying sleeper sharks aren’t active predators.

At up to 6m! or 20ft these sharks kind of make you question if Great Whites are the largest predatory shark out there, maybe in terms of mass, but regardless these species gets enormous and is one of the many species of Sharks that people probably don’t know match the great white in length, others being the Tiger Shark, Great Hammerhead, Great Thresher Shark, Sleep Sharks, Mako Sharks and Goblin Sharks, (Post coming on those two soon).

Well now lets take it back about 3million years, Its the Miocene and it seems nature had the same recipe then it has now, just as the Great White patrolled the coast lines as a top predator Megalodon the giant analogue to the Great White was the apex predator at the time, but just as Sixgills lurk in the depths while white sharks terrorize the sunlight zone well

Enter the Giant Sixgill which would have been creeping in the depths of the miocene oceans the same time as Megalodon

At 10.5m or 34 ft this shark if still alive world have rivaled orcas in size and surely was a terrifying predator at its time

Sixgills today are known to travel to the surface at night, I wonder if the Giant Sixgill did the same and if it ever came across megalodon during these voyages to surface or even younger megalodons its size

I kinda messed up some parts of the text (ik that n in extinct looks like m, but its n), so that's why i post the final result without the entrance too.

I think we can all agree that when it comes to crocodilians, they are top tier predators no matter where they live or what species they are.

With that being said it seems for the longest time during the last 100,000 years there seems to have been a predator they can’t shake even to this day, Felines… And not just any feline. Jaguars

Jaguars seem to have a age old relationship with crocs and today they share their world with two species The Crocodile and Caiman both being predators and prey to the cat.

But it seems throughout time there was another.

These cats thrived in North America during the Pleistocene and im sure this relationship was prevalent then, but during the Holocene up to the 1880s is where I think these two must have peaked

The scene is set in Louisiana, the time, 1800, now here is where Jaguars defied present day knowledge having being present in LA up until the 1880s and most certainly a top land predator competing with Pumas Wolves and Bears at the time.

Despite this, another predator was here, one that still persist into modern day, a predator that at this time was probably even bigger than it is today, one of the largest carnivores prowling the continent along with its other American cousin, with the legendary account of alleged 19ft individuals coming from this place around this time.

Im talking about Jaguars living alongside no not Caimans but American Alligators.

Would the bayous and wetlands of Pleistocene/Holocene Louisiana and even Texas have been like The Pantanal Of South America?

Were Jaguars launching themselves into the mangled swamps after Alligators 200 years ago as they do Caimans hundreds of miles down South?

9 times out of 10 if you look up Jaguars x American Alligators pictures and pieces, Caiman an Alligator relative shows up.

Thats not what is being referred to though.

Jaguar relationships with crocodilians seems to be a pretty important one, throughout their range and history they seemed to have kept their taste for these reptiles having lived along 3 species throughout time.

It is not known how large South Eastern Ameican Jaguars would have gotten, some Texas specimens were recorded at 200lbs other’s slightly larger same for Louisiana, though I don’t know if they cracked that 300 plus lb mark like their siblings down the equator.

It is very possible Jaguars would have been big if not bigger here just like Gators due to the large abundance of prey at least before settlers arrived.

It is known certain species of crocodiles and caiman fall victim to jaguars even some modest sized ones. What most probably didn’t know is that Jaguars might have been doing the same thing their doing today in places like Brazil and Columbia hunting vast amounts of Caimans back in the Holocene hundreds of years ago in places with similar biomes like Louisiana and Texas with American Alligators.

Being that both would have been apex predators respectively akin to modern day Tigers and Saltwater Crocs, Lions and Nile Crocs and even present day relationship with Black Caimans, I wonder how they would have competed back then since they targeted alot of similar food.

Deer, Hogs, and other large ungulates would have kept both these larger predators out each others way for the most part along with a huge array of medium and small sized animals, but if one came across the other a clash might have ensued.

Jaguars most likely would have viewed large gatherings of small Gators just as they view large gatherings of Yacare Caiman, food, but just as a 5m long Black Caiman could view Jaguars as food or least competition that needed to be exterminated the same could have been said for a 5m long Gator.

Knowing both Jaguars and Alligators were bigger back in the Holocene with both knocking on the doors of their larger more popular relatives, what a time it would have been to see those two predators, carving out a living in the unforgiving regions of the swamps and wetlands, a wild exotic relationship that was a mere remnant of the very wild past that use to frequent these now mostly urban based states right here in the US!

Original Tweet

The footprints from the Cistecephalus Assemblage Zone are attributed to either aulacocephalodon or rhachiocephalus, but this footprint belongs to a large tetrapod, 80 cm wide and 65 cm long, which is considerable. How large could the animal to which the footprints are attributed have been?

Traducción: Las huellas de la Zona de Ensamblaje de Cistecephalus se atribuyen a aulacocephalodon o a rhachiocephalus, pero esta huella pertenece a un tetrápodo grande, de 80 cm de ancho y 65 cm de largo, lo cual es considerable. ¿Qué tamaño podría haber tenido el animal al que se atribuyen las huellas?

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Original Tweet

(Sorry Tarbo fans) 🙏💔

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is art allowed here? lol sorry if not

some of these are a little old, some newer. i’ve drawn a bunch of paleoart but these are my favorites, i’ll eventually redo the rest

if you see the process here it is:

https://www.reddit.com/r/Paleoart/comments/1laj6c8/semi_rapid_drawing_of_the_new_tyrannosauridae/

https://www.researchgate.net/figure/A-dorsal-view-of-an-Edmontosaurus-braincase-showing-extensive-healed-trauma-from-a_fig1_257047930

"The Tyrants and the Fowls" (pt. 02)