What was the ancestor of modern whales, the dragon whale, once in the ocean?

The dragon whale, also known as the robotic tooth whale, is an ancient marine mammal whose bite force can probably destroy a head weighing more than 1,600 kilograms. The dragon's whale's amazing bite force made it the dominant force in the ancient seas.

It was also a very ferocious creature in the ocean before, and it also belonged to the role of the overlord of the ocean.

At the end of the Eocene, the Earth's environment was still very hot. However, it is much drier than before, so what used to be covered with dense rainforest is now open land. No longer confined by dense bushes, some mammal individuals grow very large.

On low-tree plains, the size of the individual is an advantage.

These changes are not beneficial for all animals. Huge carnivorous birds have apparently disappeared, replaced on many continents by ferocious, new types of carnivorous mammals. Mammals ruled the world like the dinosaurs of the past.

However, they still face the toughest test. The climate on Earth has changed, and even so, it is milder than in the days that followed.

Environmental factors that adversely affect living things arise not from land, but in the ocean, affecting the most powerful mammals. This is the ancient Tethys Sea, or the ancient Mediterranean Sea, a tropical ocean that spans almost half the world and has connected Asia and the Atlantic Ocean since the time of the dinosaurs. The most successful story in the evolution of mammals took place here.

In just 10 million years, cetaceans have evolved from land animals to sea beasts of this size. However, the skeletal structure of the dragon whale suggests that it could not be the ancestor of modern cetaceans, but only a prominent side branch of the cetacean evolutionary path. By the end of the Eocene, the dragon whale had disappeared, and the skeletons of other whales were almost complete.

When it comes to the excavation of whale skeleton fossils, few people may associate Egypt with the vast desert, but if people know that the Wadi Hitan Desert in Egypt was covered by an ocean long ago, and whales thrived in it, perhaps people would not be shocked to find whale fossils in the Egyptian desert.

The mammal with the strongest bite force may be a prehistoric whale. Dragon king whales lived 40 million years ago and 34 million years ago and preyed on other whales. In fact, it was by analyzing the scarred skull of another prehistoric whale, the spear-toothed whale, that scientists were able to assess the bite force of the dragon king whale.

Based on the extent of damage to the spear-toothed whale's skull, the researchers calculated that this aquatic predator could destroy a skull weighing more than 1,600 kilograms.

The real owner of this fossil is not a marine reptile that escaped the mass extinction of Cretaceous species, but an ancient whale named "basilosaurus", a super-marine predator that lived in the late Eocene.

It was calculated that this aquatic predator could destroy a head weighing more than 1600 kilograms.

The average length of the dragon whale is 18 meters (60 feet) and it has a more slender body than modern whales. Paleontologists are very interested in their short, degraded hind limbs, as it could prove that modern whales originally evolved from terrestrial mammals. The dragon whale is also a state fossil from Mississippi and Alabama.

Because the size of the dragon king whale is similar to that of the dinosaurs.

Because of its large size, it bears some resemblance to dinosaurs.

Because it has the status of dinosaur level among marine life.

Because it is a completely new species, this breed has not been found before.

The bite force of the dragon whale is amazing, and the dragon whale is also a state fossil in Mississippi and Alabama.

Speaking of dragon king whales, everyone may be a little unfamiliar, after all, this species has been extinct for tens of millions of years. The dragon whale is a prehistoric marine mammal, some scientists believe that the dragon whale is the ancestor of the modern whale, and the dragon whale eventually evolved into the modern toothed whale and baleen whale, but some scientists believe that the dragon whale and the modern whale are only close relatives, there is no inheritance relationship, and the dragon whale is just a branch in the evolution of whales.

When the fossil was first discovered, it was thought to be a giant marine reptile because of its short hind limbs, but as research progressed, scientists eventually realized that it was a marine mammal and that it was closely related to modern whales.

The dragon king whale is a prehistoric giant beast that can reach an average length of 18 meters, and the largest dragon king whale fossil found so far is 21 meters, and perhaps even longer than 21 meters. Unlike modern whales, the dragon whale has a rugged body, its body is relatively slender, and unlike modern whales, the dragon whale does not have breathing holes, so this prehistoric giant beast must stick its head out of the sea when breathing, which means that the dragon whale cannot dive for a long time.

According to scientists' estimates, the dragon whale can easily destroy a 1,600-kilogram head, which is amazing. In the time of the dragon whale, it was almost invincible, and only one or two species could compete with it. Among them, the mouse white shark can be said to be the old enemy of the dragon whale, the mouse white shark is a kind of shark, its size is similar to the dragon king whale, and according to the discovery of the mouse white shark and the dragon whale fossils, two prehistoric giants have preyed on each other.

The dragon king whale is so powerful, what is it that makes it extinct? Some scientists believe that the extinction of the dragon whale may be related to the emergence of another marine giant beast, the megalodon, because the age of the appearance of the megalodon is the era of the extinction of the dragon whale, the megalodon has better physical fitness and greater bite force than the dragon whale, which means that the megalodon can more easily prey or hunt the dragon whale, and the dragon whale eventually died out due to lack of food and large-scale hunting of the megalodon and some other climatic reasons.

It is worth mentioning that the dragon whale's old enemy, the mouse white shark, went extinct almost at the same time as the dragon whale, and the reason for its extinction is similar to that of the dragon whale, both of which are more or less related to the megalodon, and the two species love and kill each other, and then go extinct together, which is also a very interesting thing in biological history.

The higher the food chain, the more demanding the living environment of organisms.

The mysteries of the ocean have so far been very limited.

It's fake, if you look closely, when the whale comes out of the water, you can see the lower part of the tail in a short picture, which is white by the abdomen, and there is a small fin on the back near the tail, which is the basic characteristic of killer whales. And it does not correspond to the tail proportions of the so-called "dragon king whale" in the later picture.

Hehe, that's not true, there's a computer-made shadow, and you find that the picture without a tail coming out of the water has been cut, and it's the tail of a killer whale.

The most secrets in the world are the universe and the oceans, many places that are beyond the reach of humans. As for whether there is extinction, it's just that humans feel that they are extinct, and in fact, they may still be swimming in the sea.

The more the top hegemon, the more likely it is that changes in the natural environment will cause extinction.

It is not suitable for the laws of nature, and the survival of the fittest is based on natural selection.

The more you are at the top of the food chain, the more constraints you are subjected to.

I do not adapt to changes in the environment and the renewal of nature.

The reason for this has not yet been confirmed, and the initial speculation is that the environment has changed.

There are many mysterious marine animals in the vast sea, some of these sea creatures are known to live in shallow sea areas, some live in mysterious deep sea areas, and their appearance is quite strange and ugly, and people once joked that the creatures in the deep sea can grow as long as they want. In the ocean, the most popular marine animal that adults and children care about is whales, whales are mammals, not fish. There are two main types of whales, one is the toothed whale and the other is the baleen whale.

For example, some blue whales or gray whales belong to baleen whales, while toothed whales are a relatively large type of whales, such as sperm whales.

There is a very thick layer of fat under the skin of the whale, its presence can supply the whale with heat, and the whale's body also has a lot of special structure, and their body can store a lot of oxygen so that they can swim freely in the water. Among the many whales, killer whales are particularly strong sea creatures, and they are also nicknamed killer whales, and they have a very fierce temperament. No matter what kind of whale, in addition to the difference in appearance and size, they can swim around in the water also thanks to their fins, you must know that the whale is a land creature a long time ago, it is because of the change of the environment that it slowly evolved into a legless creature to run into the water to find its own place, but land creatures rely on limbs to walk.

The oldest whale found so far is called the Bucky Whale, this guy looks like a hyena in the African savannah, with a slender tail and slender limbs, and the way they go into the water is also quite funny, just like a dog planing, with small paws fluttering back and forth in the water, compared with the Bucky whale, the swimming whale has a stronger tail, and some are like the current otters, so they are more suitable for the environment in the sea. The original whale was very widely distributed in the ocean at that time, their footprints were all over Asia, Africa, Europe and other continents, they could not only move on land but also swim in the sea, and the trajectory was also quite long, perfectly traveling across all continents, and truly achieved the legend of crossing the land and the sea.

After studying the ancient animal Bucky whale, people found that the ankles of this whale and artiodactyls are the same, so it is very likely that the ancestors of whales are artiodactyls, and scientists have found that among the existing animals, hippos and whales have a recent relationship, which means that they have a common ancestor as early as prehistory, which does sound very new.

It is believed that an asteroid hit the Earth 65 million years ago – destroying the dinosaur family – and it was a blessing in disguise that the land flourished. In the Tertiary Period, between 50 million and 65 million years ago, all mammals lived on land, and the ancestors of modern cetaceans were no exception. For some reason, some animals that run on all fours began to return to rivers and oceans during the Eocene epoch, 50 million years ago, and in less than 8 million years, their body shape and habits changed dramatically.

These discoveries, especially the Pakistani ancient whales (pakicetidae), are enough to thrill scientists, because they are a transitional type between terrestrial mammals and modern cetaceans, once again providing beautiful evidence for the theory of evolution. However, these transitional fossils are more on the whale side, either amphibious or fully adapted to marine life. There are two important questions that remain unanswered:

What did the terrestrial ancestors of cetaceans, the most primitive cetaceans, who could only run and not swim, look like? Which of the world's living mammals is most closely related to cetaceans? Scientists are working to look at the evolution of cetaceans in more detail, and different professions have different approaches.

Based on the teeth and ears of the fossils, paleontologists tend to believe that whales are closest to Mesonychians, a now-extinct hoofed animal that lived in the Tertiary period. Molecular biologists who study the DNA characteristics of extant animals prefer hippos, believing that this modern cloven-hoofed animal is the closest relative of whales. On September 20 of this year, Thewissen published a report in the British journal Nature that his team had discovered two new Pakistani ancient whale fossils, which are entirely terrestrial.

Just the next day, Gingerich reported in the American journal Science that two other fossils of ancient whales, also dug up in Pakistan, had well-developed limbs that could be amphibious, and new discoveries of both showed that artiodactyls such as cows, hippos, pigs, camels, and giraffes were closely related to whales. For Gingerich, it may have taken a little effort to make this point, since he had originally argued that Mesonychians were close relatives of whales.

Initially, Darwin thought that the whale's recent ancestor was probably a bear, which made people laugh at the time, so he finally deleted the phrase because it meant that there were many possibilities for species evolution, and it was not certain. There are also researchers who believe that whales should have evolved from some kind of carnivore on land. Some people also believe that the land ancestor of whales should be a certain type of ungulate, because some studies have found that the fossilized skull of the dragon king whale is very similar to the ancient ungulates.