Names of underwater dinosaurs. The most terrible dinosaurs that lived on earth

For a whole century, Russian dinosaurs played hide and seek with scientists. Who won this exciting game?

“Russian dinosaurs, like the snakes of Ireland, are remarkable only because they are not there,” said American paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh. 120 years ago he came to Russian Empire and was surprised to learn that not a single dinosaur bone had been found in our country. That was incredible. Were there really no Mesozoic giants in the largest country in the world?

Russian scientists have had no luck with dinosaurs. These animals reigned on the planet in the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, when half of the current territory of Russia was covered by shallow seas. Herds of lizards roamed inland. But their bones were not preserved - they ended up in the area of ​​sedimentation, from where sand and clay were dragged into the seas to the burial sites. The bones arrived there ground into dust.

Occasionally, conditions on land developed that were suitable for preserving remains: the dinosaur drowned in a swamp or lake, or suffocated in layers of volcanic ash. But such burials were thoroughly destroyed over the past millions of years - glaciers passed through Russia, cutting away bedrock, and then melted glacial waters began to erode and break the fossilized bones.

Compared to the dinosaur cemeteries of Asia and America, where thousands of bones were dug up, this looked downright meager: in Russia, only one single bone turned out to be dinosaur.

Occasionally, fossil remains are found in quarries, mines, and along the banks of rivers and streams. Great luck, if they are noticed in time and handed over to scientists. But it was luck that was missing for a long time. IN late XIX centuries, fragments of bones that could pass for dinosaurs were occasionally brought to Russian museums. Strange ribs were found in the gravel used to pave the Kursk road. A piece of bone was delivered from Volyn-Podolia. An unusual vertebra was unearthed in the Southern Urals. What was accidentally obtained was described as the remains of dinosaurs, but later it turned out that these were the bones of crocodiles, marine reptiles, and even amphibians.

However, even such finds were few - all of them would have fit in a small basket. Compared to the dinosaur cemeteries of Asia and America, where thousands of bones were dug up, this looked downright meager: in Russia, only one single bone turned out to be dinosaur. A small fragment of a lizard’s foot was dug up in the Chita region near a coal mine. Paleontologist Anatoly Ryabinin described it in 1915 under the name Allosaurus sibiricus, although from one bone it was impossible to determine which dinosaur it belonged to. It is clear that it is predatory - and that’s all.

Soon more valuable remains were found. True, two funny things happened with them at once. One day, an Amur Cossack lieutenant colonel noticed that fishermen were tying strange weights on their nets - long stones with a hole in the middle. The fishermen said that they collect them on the banks of the Amur River, where a high cliff is eroded. According to them, it turned out that the entire beach there was covered with stone knuckles.

This was reported to the Academy of Sciences. An expedition was organized, which, right before the revolution, delivered more than a ton of fossilized remains to St. Petersburg. They assembled a large skeleton from them, describing it as the new kind duck-billed dinosaur. The lizard was given the name “Amur Manchurosaurus” (Mandschurosaurus amurensis). True, evil tongues called him a gypsosaur, because he was missing many bones - they were molded from plaster. The skull is the most an important part the skeleton was also made of plaster, only a piece of the braincase was real. Later it became clear that the original bones belonged to different types and genera of lizards.

Now almost none of the paleontologists recognize Manchurosaurs. The irony also lies in the fact that the bones were collected on the right, Chinese bank of the Amur. So “gypsosaurus” should not be considered Russian, but rather Chinese.

The curiosity came out with a second skeleton. The lizard was dug up in the coal mines of Sakhalin by Japanese paleontologists and named the Sakhalin Nipponosaurus (Nipponosaurus sachalinensis). This was in the 1930s, when, after Russia’s defeat in Russian-Japanese war, Japan owned the island. Fifteen years later, Sakhalin again became Russian, but the dinosaur remained “Japanese”. And no more dinosaur remains were found here.

The search for dinosaurs in Russia and the Soviet Union remained unsuccessful for a long time. It was getting ridiculous. In the late 1920s, to the southern outskirts Soviet Union, a paleontological expedition headed to the Kazakh steppes. “The whole day the horse walked over countless dinosaur bones,” recalled its participant, paleontologist and science fiction writer Ivan Efremov. The bones covered vast areas of tens of kilometers. But not a single skeleton or skull was found - only fragments of bones.

“They didn’t know how to study them back then, no one collected them,” says paleontologist Alexander Averyanov. Only half a century later, experts learned to identify extinct animals from fragmentary remains. But then the huge dinosaur cemetery in Kazakhstan had already been lost.

Then, for several years, Soviet paleontologists worked in the Kazakh Kara-Tau mountains, where layers of gray shale lie. These mountains contain a great variety of prints of fish, plants and insects Jurassic period. Unique skeletons of ancient salamanders, turtles, complete prints of pterosaurs, and a bird feather were discovered here. The remains of almost all the inhabitants of the Jurassic lake and those who inhabited its shores were found. And again - no dinosaurs, although the Jurassic period was their heyday...

In the first half of the last century, numerous burial sites of Permian lizards, Devonian fish, and Triassic amphibians were discovered in Russia. Paleontological laboratories had everything from fossil insects to mammoth carcasses. Everything except the notorious lizards - that’s what Ivan Efremov called dinosaurs in the Russian manner.

It wasn't until 1953 that paleontologists really got lucky. On the high bank Kemerovo River Kiya near the village of Shestakovo, geologists came across the skull and incomplete skeleton of a small, dog-sized psittacosaurus, which was named Siberian (Psittacosaurus sibiricus).

The skeleton was delivered to Moscow. A paleontological expedition was immediately sent to Kuzbass, but luck turned against the scientists again. They did not find any remains - the water was high that summer, the layer with bones was flooded.

Three years later, at the request of Efremov, an expedition of Kemerovo schoolchildren, led by Gennady Prashkevich, went to Shestakovo, in the future famous writer, poet, translator. The guys then collected a whole box of bones, but, as it turned out in Moscow, they all belonged to mammoths and bison. Only half a century later, several more dinosaur bones were found in Shestakovo, including huge, bucket-like sauropod vertebrae.

Everything was no less complicated with the locations of dinosaurs on Far East. In the 1950s, an expedition from the Paleontological Institute tried to find dinosaurs in Blagoveshchensk. Excavations brought nothing but a handful of scattered bones. It was decided that the bones were redeposited here: once whole skeletons were broken by water, after which the fragments were carried away to another place. They put an end to the location. As it turned out later, it was in vain.

The lizards found in the Far East turned out to be very interesting - they were one of the last dinosaurs to live on the planet.

Nowadays, excavations are carried out annually in the Far East, mainly in Blagoveshchensk. The local lizards turned out to be very interesting - they were one of the last dinosaurs to live on the planet. They lived literally at the end of the great extinction. The study of Russian dinosaurs in general has advanced greatly in the last twenty years. A dozen large sites were found, and valuable remains were found in previously known discovery sites. The main burial places of Russian dinosaurs are located beyond the Urals - in Kundur, Blagoveshchensk, Shestakovo.

Unique place discovered on the banks of the Kakanaut River on the Koryak Highlands - this is the northernmost point of discovery of dinosaurs on the planet. Bones from seven families and egg shells from at least two species of dinosaurs have been found here. Remains of Cretaceous lizards were also found in Buryatia (locations Murtoy and Krasny Yar) and Krasnoyarsk Territory (Bolshoy Kemchug). Dinosaurs of the Jurassic period were found in Yakutia (Teete) and in the Republic of Tyva (Kalbak-Kyry).

A small burial of Jurassic reptiles was also discovered near the city of Sharypovo in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. Local historian Sergei Krasnolutsky came up with an idea: since dinosaurs were found in the neighboring Kemerovo region, then they can be found here in the Krasnoyarsk Territory. In search of bones, he went to a coal mine.

For a long time nothing came across, but finally the local historian saw the broken shells of turtles. There were so many of them that this layer was later called turtle soup. And nearby were bone plaques and teeth of crocodiles, long curved claws of dinosaurs that lived in the mid-Jurassic period.

This time is practically a “blank spot” in the evolution of terrestrial life. Very few traces of him remain. It is not surprising that excavations in Sharypovo, which have been ongoing for several years, have led to the discovery of new animals. Among them are the as yet undescribed stegosaurus and predatory dinosaur Kileskus (Kileskus aristotocus) is a distant ancestor of the famous tyrannosaurs.

In the western part of Russia there are no burials with intact skeletons and skulls of dinosaurs. Here, primarily in the Volga region and the Belgorod region, one comes across mostly scattered remains - individual vertebrae, teeth or bone fragments.

An interesting discovery was made a hundred kilometers from Moscow, near the Peski railway station, in a quarry where white limestone is mined. In these quarries there are karst sinkholes from the Jurassic period. In the early 1990s, bulldozers opened up a whole chain of ancient caves. 175 million years ago an underground river flowed through them, originating in the lake. The river carried the remains of animals, tree branches, and plant spores underground. Over the course of several years, paleontologists managed to collect numerous turtle shells, bones of amphibians, crocodiles and ancient mammals, fish skeletons, freshwater shark spines and the remains of predatory coelurosaurs (Coelurosauria). These dinosaurs were probably about three meters long, although the bones found were small: teeth the size of a fingernail and a claw smaller than a matchstick.

Gradually, the picture of the life of Russian lizards is becoming more and more complete. Surely new burials will be discovered. And those that have been known for a long time constantly bring surprises in the form of bones of previously unknown dinosaurs. Othniel Charles Marsh, who insisted that there were no Russian dinosaurs, concluded his statement by saying that sooner or later the remains of these animals would be found in Russia. The American paleontologist turned out to be right, although he had to wait a long time.

Do you want to know what types of dinosaurs learned to swim underwater?

Most of the huge swimming monsters we know about are called marine reptiles, not dinosaurs. These huge creatures lived in the seas and oceans at the same time that dinosaurs roamed the Earth.

The most famous marine predator is Spinosaurus.

It was the largest marine predatory dinosaur that we know of. Scientists think that he could live both on land and in water. He could dive underwater and swim, as his limbs had membranes in the shape of the fins of modern drivers. He probably hunted sharks and big fish.

Spinosaurus is the only dinosaur that we have ever learned about. most your life in the water. Another marine dinosaur, Ceratosaurus, could probably swim and hunt crocodiles and large fish underwater.

Swimming reptiles

Spinosaurus wasn't the only large dinosaur to live in water!

The sea was teeming with large and ferocious reptiles of all shapes and sizes. Here are a few of them:

Nothosaurus Nobu Tamura

The first large ocean reptiles were Nechosaurus, which means "false reptile". They lived during the Triassic period, probably leading a lifestyle similar to that of modern seals. There are about a dozen different species, but the most famous of them is Nothosaurus. This animal was about 4 meters (13 feet), with long, webbed toes and may have had a tail.

These reptiles replaced the plesiosaurs that appeared in the early Jurassic period. Most had long necks and small heads, ranging in size from 2.5 meters (8 feet) to 14 meters (46 feet) in length.

Pliosaur

The largest of them was the Pliosaurus. This animal had teeth more than 30 centimeters (12 in) long, and the pressure of its jaws was four times more powerful than that of Tyrannosaurus Rex. It is 15 meters (49 ft) long.

Another underwater plesiosaur is the long-eyed Elamosaurus.

Elamosaurus

It had four fins and grew to be about 14 meters (46 ft) long. It was a very slow swimmer and probably tracked large schools of fish while hunting.

Their necks were so long that they could not lift their heads above the water.

Why didn't all dinosaurs know how to swim?

The word "dinosaur" has a very specific meaning.

Science uses the term "dinosaur" to describe a certain type of creature (such as Spinosaurus), but this name does not include marine reptiles or so-called "flying dinosaurs."

One of the reasons for the different classification is different kind their limbs. Dinosaurs had limbs that were located on the ventral part of their bodies, and marine reptiles had limbs that grew on the sides.

In previous publications we have already touched on the topic of dinosaurs. Then we were talking about the ten largest species known to science. Today we want to introduce you to a list of the ten most ferocious sea dinosaurs. So.

Shastasaurus - a genus of dinosaurs that lived at the end of Triassic period(more than 200 million years ago) in the territory of modern North America and, possibly, China. His remains were discovered in California, British Columbia and the Chinese province of Guizhou. This predator is the largest marine reptile ever found on the planet. It could grow up to 21 meters in length and weigh 20 tons.

In ninth place in the ranking is Dakosaurus - saltwater crocodile, who lived in the late Jurassic - early Cretaceous period (more than 100.5 million years ago). It was a rather large, carnivorous animal, adapted almost exclusively to hunting large prey. It could grow up to 6 meters in length.

Thalassomedon is a genus of dinosaur that lived in North America about 95 million years ago. Most likely, he was the main predator of his time. Thalassomedon grew up to 12.3 m in length. The size of its flippers reached about 1.5–2 meters. The length of the skull was 47 centimeters, the length of the teeth was 5 cm. It ate fish.

Nothosaurus (Nothosaurus) is a sea lizard that lived 240–210 million years ago in the territory modern Russia, Israel, China and North Africa. It reached about 4 meters in length. It had webbed limbs, with five long fingers, which could be used both for movement on land and for swimming. Probably ate fish. The complete skeleton of Nothosaurus can be seen at the Natural History Museum in Berlin.

In sixth place on the list of the most ferocious marine dinosaurs is Tylosaurus, a large marine predatory lizard that inhabited the oceans at the end of the Cretaceous period (about 88–78 million years ago). Was dominant sea ​​predator of its time. Grew up to 14 m in length. It ate fish, large predatory sharks, small mosasaurs, plesiosaurs and waterfowl.

Thalattoarchon was a large marine reptile that lived more than 245 million years ago in what is now the western United States. The remains, consisting of part of the skull, spine, pelvic bones, and parts of the hind fins, were discovered in Nevada in 2010. Thalattoarchon is estimated to have been the apex predator of its time. It grew to be at least 8.6 m in length.

Tanystropheus is a genus of lizard-like reptiles that lived in the Middle Triassic about 230 million years ago. It grew up to 6 meters in length, and was distinguished by a very elongated and mobile neck, which reached 3.5 m. It led a predatory aquatic or semi-aquatic lifestyle, probably hunting near the shore for fish and cephalopods.

Liopleurodon is a genus of large carnivorous marine reptiles that lived at the turn of the Middle and Late Jurassic period (approximately 165 million to 155 million years ago). It is assumed that the largest known Liopleurodon was just over 10 m in length, but typical sizes for it range from 5 to 7 m (according to other sources 16-20 meters). Body weight is estimated at 1–1.7 tons. These apex predators likely hunted from ambush, attacking large cephalopods, ichthyosaurs, plesiosaurs, sharks, and other large animals they could catch.

Mosasaurus (Mosasaurus) is a genus of extinct reptiles that lived in the territory of modern Western Europe and North America during the Late Cretaceous - 70–65 million years ago. Their remains were first found in 1764 near the Meuse River. The total length of representatives of this genus ranged from 10 to 17.5 m. According to appearance resembled a mixture of fish (or whale) and crocodile. They were in the water all the time, diving to a considerable depth. They ate fish, cephalopods, turtles and ammonites. According to some scientists, these predators are distant relatives modern monitor lizards and iguanas.

Megalodon (Carcharocles megalodon) - extinct species prehistoric shark, which lived throughout the oceans 28.1–3 million years ago. Is the largest known predatory fish in history. Megalodon is estimated to have reached 18 meters in length and weighed 60 tons. In body shape and behavior it was similar to modern white shark. He hunted cetaceans and other large sea animals. It is interesting that some cryptozoologists claim that this animal could have survived to the present day, but apart from the huge teeth found (up to 15 cm in length), there is no other evidence that the shark still lives somewhere in the ocean.

When dinosaur bones were found in bags in the USA and Canada, in Russia they could not boast of at least one or two vertebrae of ancient animals. The fact is that during the Jurassic and Cretaceous periods, the territory of present-day Russia was flooded with shallow seas. Dinosaurs lived here too, but finding their remains turned out to be more difficult - water and stones ground their bones into dust. The skeletons were preserved in swamps and volcanic ash, but glaciers drilled the earth into mush, and glacial waters eroded what was left. But Russian scientists have adapted to such difficult conditions. Now scattered dinosaur bones are found both in the Far East and in the Moscow region. This is done professionally by Pavel Skuchas, Candidate of Biological Sciences, specialist in Mesozoic vertebrates, Associate Professor at St. Petersburg State University. Pavel described a new genus of giant dinosaurs - Tengrisaurs, and then a new dinosaur - Sibirotitan, which walked across the territory of modern Russia 120 million years ago. Agata Korovina talked to Pavel about what dinosaurs we eat for dinner, what Mickey Mouse and amphibians have in common, how humans will change in the future, and whether we will one day be able to herd a dinosaur in our backyard.

If a paleontologist walks through the forest with a girl who is not a paleontologist, what does he see, what will he tell her, given his professional deformation?

If a girl is a biologist, then you can afford a lot... Dinosaurs have a striking feature - their legs are located under the body, slender, while a lizard, for example, has everything sticking out to the side, and it waddles around. And you can give a girl a compliment: “Your legs are like a dinosaur.” The unsavvy one will hit you in the face, but the savvy one will be glad that it’s a good pair, the sagittal placement of the limbs.

- What about around? We see forest belts, cramps, cliffs, but what do you see?

The brain reacts to quarries, especially when you are traveling on a train. You immediately remember the geological map, the age of the rocks. Sometimes paleontologists jump off the train, run and find interesting things. And the second thing, when you come back from an expedition, it’s very good to look for mushrooms afterwards. It's easier than dice. Because bones are sometimes one centimeter, teeth - one and a half to two millimeters.

- What kind of superpower? How do you find them?

There is a special approach. Bone-bearing rock is collected, ideally some kind of sand or sandstone. A small handful is thrown into a sieve, and you begin to carefully rinse it in water. Small grains of sand and mud float away, leaving stones and bones. And this is where you start to choose. When the eye is trained, one and a half to two millimeters of a tooth is normal, you find it. To find something from the Jurassic period, eyes alone are no longer enough. What remains in the sieve is dried, and then we examine it under a microscope.

- You reconstructed Tengrisaurus using several vertebrae. How is this possible?

Reconstruction of the appearance of fossil organisms from small remains, for example from two vertebrae, is very approximate. The closest relatives of this dinosaur are identified, for which a complete skeleton is known. You can understand whether the dinosaur was 10-12 meters, as in the case of our Siberian sauropod dinosaurs, or whether it was a giant. Scientists rely on published articles. Sometimes more than one hundred or two hundred signs are used to clarify family relationships.

- But there will still be a difference: a different jaw, different muscles...

Indeed, therefore, any reconstruction based on an incomplete skeleton is a convention and an assumption.

When paleontologists describe isolated bones in their works, they do not reconstruct the external appearance. This is already the prerogative of people who are interested in paleontology.

It’s great that several wonderful paleoillustrators and paleoartists have appeared in Russia. One of them, for example, is Andrey Atuchin.

The voice of some dinosaurs has been reconstructed. There is a group of dinosaurs that lived at the end of the Cretaceous period, they are called duck-billed dinosaurs, or hadrosaurs. They were herbivores, quite peaceful, although large, 5–6 meters, walked on their hind legs, and the males had hollow ridges on their heads that connected to the nasopharynx. The idea arose that this was a resonator. They created a model, blew it, and got some sound. It's hardly a perfect match because we have to take soft tissue into account, but we still have a rough idea of ​​how dinosaurs screamed.

- Why did these three vertebrae remain, what happened to the rest of the skeleton?

Fossils, especially those of Mesozoic age, were often preserved under very specific conditions. Usually this is a body of water: lake, river, sea. There is a current in the river, so skeletons in river sediments are usually not preserved, they are carried away by the water, they begin to fall apart, and isolated remains are found here.

The desert is ideal for a paleontologist. We worked in Uzbekistan, there are wonderful outcrops of ancient rocks, and dinosaur bones can be collected like mushrooms.

We have forests. You can find something on the banks of rivers where cliffs form, or in active or abandoned quarries. For example, coal is mined, and on top there are layers containing the remains of dinosaurs. This also happens.

When I talked with, they said that they describe their finds, and photograph, and sketch, and make computer models- because they don’t know what will be important later, because they might miss something now. Do you have something you're not sure about but you just keep it?

Of course, this especially works with isolated residues. There are still bones, we don’t understand whose they are. In the Krasnoyarsk Territory they found very small vertebrae with processes in the shape of a lancet or a rhombus - there is nothing similar in the modern fauna. We can't even identify the group. We only understand that this is some kind of reptile. I showed at conferences: “Colleagues, please, what is this?” (this is normal practice when the paleontologist does not understand anything at all). And still no one has said anything. But we published an article, and when, for example, in the UK they find the skeleton of an animal with the same processes on its vertebrae, they will immediately remember our find, and the problem will be solved. If you cannot solve a problem, set this task to everyone - let everyone think.

- Where in Russia can you find dinosaur bones?

You can list them on the fingers of one hand. A unique place is the Chebulinsky district in the Kemerovo region. There are a lot of river sediments there, and there is the Shestakovo site, where entire skeletons have been preserved. Other places - surroundings of the city of Blagoveshchensk in the Far East, south Krasnoyarsk Territory, Chita region. The bones in Shestakovo are very fragile.

Even if you find a skeleton and start picking with your finger, everything will quickly fall apart. Specialists had to soak each bone with a special glue. The skeleton is not pulled out of the rock, the rock is coated with plaster and boarded up with boards, this is called “taking with a monolith,” and taken to the laboratory, where it is then cleared.

- How did it happen that dinosaur bones are in Great Britain, and in the Chebulinsky region, and in Antarctica?

The configuration of the continents is constantly changing. When the dawn of the dinosaurs began, the Jurassic period, all the continents were united into a single supercontinent - Pangea. And the composition of faunas in different parts globe was very similar. Fauna of Great Britain from the mid-Jurassic period and Western Siberia almost identical, but these are long distances. Then Pangea split into the northern continent - Laurasia, which included Europe, Asia and North America, and Gondwana - a group of southern continents. Strange creatures have always lived in Gondwana. They penetrated there from Laurasia and evolved there completely independently of other regions.

- What are the specifics of our “Russian” dinosaur? How is it different from the rest?

He is not much different from others. But it is very evolutionarily advanced, that is, it is already a complex sauropod. Giant sauropod dinosaurs, in appearance, when viewed from afar, are all approximately the same type: long neck and a tail, four legs, large sizes, and then there are some variations: for example, how the teeth were arranged, in primitive ones they are in the form of spoons, that is, with an extension to bite branches, in more advanced ones they are in the form of pencils. Ours is something intermediate between spoons and pencils.

- Was there no protection?

When you are 10–12 meters, no one is afraid of you anymore. The main task of sauropods is to grow to these sizes as quickly as possible. There were sauropods even up to 30 meters, while predators usually grew up to seven meters.

- Why didn’t predators evolve into superpredators?

This is very unprofitable. And 20-meter predators have never existed. Vegetation, apparently, was enough to feed even such giants as sauropods. Predators always have a problem - they need to hunt. Hunting is a big waste of energy. The larger the predator, the more meat it needs.

Predators are very vulnerable, this can be seen even in modern lions and tigers. For example, if a tyrannosaurus breaks a leg while attacking a victim, that’s it, it’s death, because it won’t be able to feed anymore.

be very large predator extremely difficult. Even the Tyrannosaurus rex would hardly have climbed on a giant sauropod, because he understood that the cost of a mistake was very high. Plus some other life experience, because dinosaurs were clearly no more stupid than birds.

- Which dinosaurs have survived to this day?

Only birds. Crocodiles are modern cousins ​​of dinosaurs. Both of them belong to the group of archosaurs. “Archo” means “highest”; archosaurs are the highest lizards.

But from the behavior of modern birds and crocodiles, one can understand how dinosaurs behaved. There is even such a method - bracketing. If crocodiles have complex behavior - caring for offspring, displaying during the mating season, if birds have this, then dinosaurs had it too.

In Mongolia, they even found a dinosaur in the mother hen position.

- When you eat grilled chicken, do you think you're eating a dinosaur?

I thought before. Previously, even with children who are interested in paleontology, we had a separate lesson on the anatomy of dinosaurs, where we ate grilled chicken. Yes, indeed, exactly the same, not much has changed.

- There was a period when a horse could be carried away by birds of prey. What kind of time is this?

This is the beginning Cenozoic era. Before this was the end of the Cretaceous period, most dinosaurs became extinct, with the exception of birds. The niche of large flightless running predators is empty. Mammals, it seems, have been in some kind of awesome state for several million years - where are these predatory guys? They continued to be quite small. But large predatory animals appeared flightless birds and large crocodiles. Those birds' wings were reduced, and they themselves were about two meters tall. They looked a little like an ostrich: powerful legs, small wings, only a half-meter beak. And the horse was the size of a dog. The bird could kill this horse instantly with a blow from its beak. But then the mammals came to their senses, and predators also appeared among them.

- Is it established by the scratches on the bones that the horses were carried away or is this an assumption?

This is an assumption. When a paleontologist reconstructs the fauna, he looks at who was the herbivore, who was the predator, and identifies the most terrible predator, the top predator. Superpredators usually eat everyone. Let's take a white shark - what it sees is what it will eat. In the taiga, the top predator of spring is bears. A hungry large male will devour another smaller male, both a man and a wild boar.

- Can you then explain why dinosaurs became so smaller?

It is partly a myth that all dinosaurs were large. Dinosaurs occupied different niches. And there were a lot of small dinosaurs. When you're small, you can run and chase insects. This is your niche, you are an insect hunter. The bigger you are, the more vulnerable you are. An absolutely brilliant step - to master flight. When dinosaurs learned to fly, they had a chance to survive - you can fly if the conditions are unfavorable.

- What other evolutionary gadgets helped ancient animals occupy new niches?

Preservation of childish, larval traits into adulthood. This is called paedomorphosis. The second option, when the larva begins to reproduce, is neoteny. This is an absolutely brilliant thing, it is typical for tailed amphibians. There is also such a thing as facultative neoteny. For example, an Ambystoma larva (), very beautiful, with external gills, in a pond South America faces a life dilemma: to go on land or not. If there is a lot of food - a lot and good - why go through metamorphosis? And it remains a larva and begins to reproduce. The second way is that the reservoir dries up, there is little food, which means you go through metamorphosis and become a terrestrial salamander.

Inhibition of some development program, acquisition and consolidation of childhood traits is generally a very common evolutionary background. For example, you and I have a lot of paedomorphic traits. Even if we go to the mirror, we look at ourselves - typical childish features: large eyes, elongated muzzle.

Absolutely right. Can be different reasons, which slow down the program. A common case is when part of the body becomes paedomorphic, and some, on the contrary, superdeveloped. For example, swarming frogs suddenly begin to develop a very powerful skull, while the rest of the body remains semi-cartilaginous. Both Mickey Mouse and female anime characters are paedomorphic. The latter have big eyes, the breasts are of a very serious size, the result is a mixture: hyperdeveloped breasts with a completely childish head.

There are a lot of such mixes. It is even believed that humans, dinosaurs, and vertebrates in general arose through paedomorphosis. Our phylum is chordates. Our relatives are tunicates. Tunicates have a larva with a tail and a sessile stage. Now let’s imagine: the sessile stage is lost, the larva begins to multiply, and thus, most likely, “proto-fish” appeared. But then the “protofish” developed jaws, and they became fish, fish came to land, amphibians gave rise to reptiles that broke away from the water, and then it came to dinosaurs and humans.

I heard a crazy theory that aliens are people from the future, modified. They have huge eyes to get more visual information, a small mouth, since conversation will no longer play an important role, just a couple of fingers, since in the world of computers this is not particularly necessary, etc. Do you think it is possible to change into this?

Is it possible. There was a wonderful paleontologist - Alexey Petrovich Bystrov, he participated in the formation of the St. Petersburg school of paleontologists, and in the 60s he wrote the book “The Past, Present, Future of Man.” Alexey Petrovich was one of the first to imagine what people of the future would look like. But his fantasies had a serious scientific basis. He was not only a paleontologist, but also a military doctor. And during the war, several thousand human skulls passed through his hands. He tried to find out what no longer works for a person, what is a rudiment.

According to Bystrov, in a few thousand years a person will be of small stature, with a small number of teeth - wisdom teeth will disappear first - with a large head, since a lot of information will have to be processed.

Perhaps there will be fewer fingers and the eyes will become larger. Why waste the body's energy on developing the senses if you can perceive all the information visually and feel good?

- Can’t we learn to regenerate? After all, amphibians regenerated their paws, parts of the brain, and eyes.

This is already from the realm of fantasy. Salamanders and some other amphibians could indeed regenerate. But as soon as they moved to land, they complicated their body structure and lost the ability to regenerate. This is some kind of evolutionary fee. The dinosaurs began to bite off pieces of each other, and nothing grew back.

Some scientists are trying to revive mammoths, trying to do this with the help of mice. Is it possible to use some remains to revive dinosaurs, for example with the help of chickens?

If you had asked this five years ago, I would have said that this is absolutely impossible. Now I say that this is 98–99% impossible. Why? First, to reconstruct something, you need DNA. Frozen mammoths retain only fragments of DNA. Even this technically has not yet been decided. When the mammoth is restored with the help of mice or elephants, let molecular biologists think that it will be a breakthrough. Although I don't understand why. Well, it must be cool to have a pet hairy mammoth in your backyard.

About dinosaurs.

Previously, it was believed that nothing organic or complex molecular remained from dinosaurs. Then they did a brilliant study: they dissolved the bone of a tyrannosaurus, and it turned out that something was preserved there. But this is not DNA, these are collagen proteins, these are structural molecules that are in bones.

But this is already great progress. Since something molecular is conserved, maybe we will find something else under certain conditions. There is a minimal probability.

Now the last word techniques in paleontology - the use of a synchrotron. It can be used to study the detailed structure of bones. At one of the conferences, we were given special glasses and told: “Now we will fly through the cavities inside this bone.” And so we flew. This is a completely different level.

- Would you like to pet dinosaur?

No, I wouldn't want a pet dinosaur. I would be more interested to see how it really was. This is not a pile of stones for us; in fact, these are living creatures. We can speculate about how they evolved, speculate that this dinosaur hunted in a pack, but this is all speculation. So we assumed that our Tengrisaurus was 10–12 meters. I would like to know - is this true? And see some details that we cannot even imagine.

Recently, researchers discovered the fossil of a huge flying reptile that could eat the entire prey it caught without, as they say, choking. And we are talking about “food” the size of a modern horse.

The remains of an ancient creature were discovered in Transylvania - the famous historical region on the territory of Romania. Experts suggest that the find is about 66-70 million years old.

Researchers say they have found a fossilized cervical vertebra of Hacegopteryx, a genus of azhdarchid pterosaur that lived during the Upper Cretaceous era (70.6 - 66 million years ago) in what is now Romania.

Experts describe them as creatures with a short but massive neck and large jaws. That is, the animal was capable of swallowing a small person or child.

The size of the found fossilized vertebra is approximately 240 millimeters in length and six millimeters in thickness. And it was the study of the characteristics of the find that allowed scientists to assume that Hatzegopteryx could feed not only on dinosaurs the size of rats, but also on larger individuals. So the diet of pterosaurs clearly needs to be reconsidered.

Paleontologists clarify that Hatzegopteryx was a pterosaur that existed during the time of dinosaurs. Scientists initially believed that pterosaurs ate fairly small prey, such as baby dinosaurs the size of rats. But new fossils show that some large individuals of pterosaurs did not disdain larger prey - horse-sized dinosaurs, for example.

Pterosaurs grew quite massive and large during the Late Cretaceous period - the last geological era when dinosaurs existed on Earth. One of the most famous pterosaur fossils is Quetzalcoatlus, found in Texas, USA. Its wingspan reached 10-12 meters, but the creature itself, as scientists established, fed on mollusks.

Quetzalcoatlus also belonged to the azhdarchid family. And in general, scientists believed that animals of this family had approximately the same body structure - long legs, neck and wings. But the recently discovered fossil of Hacegopteryx has forced them to reconsider their views.

Hatzegopteryx had a rather short but large neck, which was nevertheless much more powerful than that of other azhdarchids. An ancient creature with powerful wings (the span of which was up to 12 meters) weighed almost a quarter of a ton. Researchers say Hacegopteryx could even be called a dangerous pterosaur due to its huge jaw.

A study about an ancient creature with huge jaws was published in the scientific publication Peer J.