The Abyss: Volume 1

Exploring the vast stretches of the ocean’s abyss where sea serpents, giant predators and terrifying fish abound.

Although submersible technology is extremely advanced, I still like to envision an old, rusty submarine slowly descending into the abyss.

Deep below the surface of our ocean lies a giant expanse of perpetual darkness. Rays of light begin to fade rapidly the lower you go, swallowed up by the seemingly empty blackness of the abyss. This eternal darkness encompasses 95% of the living space on earth, and may at first seem lifeless. But the abyss is full of creatures who seemingly belong to a strange world. Thanks to the crushing pressure, freezing temperatures and lack of light, they essentially do live on a different planet.

The abyss begins at around 650 feet below the surface, where light begins to be snuffed out and the temperature free falls. At 13,000 feet, the only light that one may stumble upon is produced by the strange creatures who call this place home. Though many are small, they are studded with mouths full of jagged teeth and jaws that detach to hold on to the rare meal that swims too close. But not all animals down here are small, as some of the largest animals in the ocean, who have inspired centuries of nautical mythology, also lurk in the abyss.

Due to its inhospitable nature, it is often said that more is known about the surface of other planets than the deepest reaches of earth’s oceans. But new technology in deep-sea submersibles are making earth’s last vast unexplored wilderness known to us. The creatures down there have always interested me because of not only their frightening look but also because of the remarkable adaptations they use to thrive in places almost as inhospitable as space. In this piece, I will look at some of the scariest and strangest creatures who exist far below the waves. Venture with me into the abyss!

The Spectacular Oarfish

For centuries, sailors have spun fanciful tales of fearsome sea serpents lurking in the vast unexplored oceans in the emptiness on maps. Sea serpents and similar sea monsters were often thrown into maps of antiquity as filler for the unknown. Perhaps the sea serpents of myth are not quite as mythological as many think.

The giant oarfish (Regalecus glesne) is the world’s longest bony fish and very serpentine in shape. They can grow up to 56 feet and weigh up to 600 pounds, already a fearsome size before factoring in any of the exaggeration that seems to accompany any good fisherman’s tale.

The name oarfish comes from their long pectoral fins which look like oars. Occasionally they are called rooster fish because of large red fins that protrude out of their heads. Their massive size may seem fearsome, but in reality, oarfish only eat plankton and lack real teeth. They usually hang out around depths of around 3,300 feet, in an area of constant dim darkness towards the beginning of the abyss. If you were to come across one here, there is a good chance it would be swimming vertical to catch the most possible plankton using their flimsy teeth-like structures called gill rakers.

Oarfish have adapted to life down here, eschewing scales for a silvery coating of a material called guanine. This helps them deal with the high pressure deep in the ocean. Their body is also apparently very gooey, according to fisherman who occasionally catch them as accidental bycatch (and finding out they are quite inedible). Besides the rare accidental catch, oarfish are very cryptic creatures and only come close to the surface when they are stressed and near death.

They can also be pushed up by storms or strong currents, which is why they are seen as harbingers for earthquakes in Japan. This seemingly outlandish claim may have some basis, as earthquake researchers have found that deep-sea fish are more sensitive to tremors at active fault-lines. In 2013, two oarfish washed up on California within one week, an incredibly rare occurrence. It offered marine scientists a unique opportunity to study the peaceful and enigmatic sea serpents of the abyss.

The ghastly and bleached remains of an oarfish (center) embalmed in ethanol at the Natural History Museum in London.

Cock-Eyed Squid

Joining the oarfish in the eternal twilight zone that stretches from 660 feet to 3,300 feet is one of the strangest creatures you will ever come across in the deep. The cock-eyed squid’s (Histioteuthis heteropsis) remarkable set of eyes help it multi-task. It is always on the lookout for a meal while steering clear of becoming one itself.

Although both of its eyes start out at the same size, the left eye rapidly grows and eventually becomes tubular and bright yellowish-green. The right eye remains small and dark. This asymmetrical set of eyes puzzled scientists for a century. Mismatching eyes is strange, even by the alien standards of the abyss.

The mismatched eyes of the deep-sea cock-eyed squid.

But scientists from Duke University cracked the code in 2017 by observing the squid in its deep Monterey Bay habitat. The squid swims upside down, keeping its giant left eye facing up while its small right eye stares down into the abyss. This helps the squid look two places at once, scanning for the shadow of potential predators above them and searching for bright bioluminescence against the pitch black backdrop below them. The left eye’s increased size helps it see shadows more clearly while the study found that increasing the right eye would not help the squid discern bioluminescence any better, which is why it stayed small.

The cock-eyed squid is a great illustration of how the deep ocean alters eye evolution. Many creatures develop their eyes to only see bioluminescence or only see ambient light. The cock-eye squid chose both. Animals in the abyss will go to great extremes to survive in the dark.

Pacific Viperfish

Battle of bioluminescence: a deep-sea shrimp spews out bioluminescence fluid in an attempt to escape from the toothy jaws of a Pacific viperfish.

Some of the most fearsome creatures lurking in the abyss are viperfish. The fish is named for the large fangs that jut out of its wide-gaping mouth. While it may look like something out of a nightmare with its scary teeth and cold, dead eyes, it looks a lot scarier than it actually is to us. The Pacific viperfish (Chauliodus macouni) is the largest species, but usually only grows to a measly foot long.

But in the abyss, they are as terrifying to anything that is attracted to the bright lights protruding down its side and belly. But these bioluminescent lights are also used for a variety of purposes to help the viperfish survive in the abysmal dark (they go down to around 16,000 feet below the ocean’s surface). The lights warn foes, help the solitary viperfish find mates, and, of course, attract crustaceans and small fish to a quick and toothy end.

Bluntnose Sixgill Shark

One of the top predators in the abyss is this behemoth of a shark, which also happens to be a living fossil lurking several thousand feet below the ocean’s surface. The bluntnose sixgill shark (Hexanchus griseus) has a body form straight out of the Triassic Period, some 200 million years ago. Its namesake traits of a rounded nose and six gill slits, along with a single dorsal fin and broad, saw-like teeth, are all traits most modern sharks moved on from millions of years ago. For example, most modern sharks only have five gill slits.

During the day, the shark hangs out around 6,500 feet below the surface along the fringes of continental plates throughout the world, from Alaska to New Zealand. During the night it moves up closer to the surface where it feeds under the cover of darkness. It eats just about any fish it comes across, including other bluntnose sixgills, and could strike out of the darkness at any second.

The descent of a dead whale carcass is a boon for these sharks, who gather over the large mound of decaying flesh like vultures, violently ripping mouthfuls of flesh. The descent of dead material from above is one of the key food sources at the ocean floor as biological productivity dramatically drops along with the disappearance of light. The continuous shower of white organic detritus particles is aptly called marine snow (it is the white specks seen in several of the paintings in this article).

A pair of bluntnose sixgill sharks arrive at a decaying whale carcass right before the feeding frenzy commences.

Unfortunately like many sharks today, bluntnose sixgill sharks are in danger because of human hunting. The large shark is fished both commercially and caught accidentally as bycatch. Because of its cryptic existence in the deep, it is currently impossible to say just how big the decline in its population has been.

Relics From The Abyss

Some frightening denizens of the deep (left to right): tentacle and beak from a giant squid, female anglerfish below her male “companion”, and the infamous cookie cutter shark.

The collection of specimens above are based on real specimens from the Natural History Museum in London. Because of their various adaptations for inhospitable habitats, most of these species can never be displayed in aquariums and when they do end up near the surface, they are usually dead or dying. The best way to glimpse the creepy collection of deep-sea animals is often through an appropriately creepy medium: collection jars filled with unsettling yellowish ethanol, deep in the storerooms of natural history museums everywhere. A little bit about each species above:

Giant squid

If you thought the oarfish or bluntnose sixgill had intimidating size, the giant squid’s staggering proportions blows them out of the water. They even inspired the legendary kraken of mariner tales of old. The world’s largest mollusk is the length of a school bus and has been found to weigh nearly a ton. It is one of the best examples of deep-sea gigantism, where invertebrates down in the abyss are much larger than their shallow-water relatives, likely due to the crushing pressure and freezing temperatures.

Like most denizens of the deep, the giant squid is very enigmatic and little is known about the elusive giants aside from what washed-up carcasses can tell us (pictures below). It was not until 2004 that a live one was photographed, and in 2006 a living giant squid, a “small” 24-foot live female found off of Japan, was captured for the first time.

Above: the giant squid in the Natural History Museum’s collection is over 28 feet long, on the smaller side for these creatures, and was accidentally caught over 700 feet below the ocean’s surface. The DNA of this specimen was key in determining that there is only one species of giant squid. The third picture shows the fearsome hooks it uses to latch on to prey with its feeding tentacles.

Besides the size, giant squid also have some fearsome features that make them the kings of the very deep. They have proportionally large eyes (up to 10 inches across and the largest in the animal kingdom) that help them find prey in the pitch black. They have eight arms and two longer feeding tentacles to wrangle prey into their beaked mouths. They eat anything, including smaller squids, and might even hunt small whales.

The giant squid’s corresponding giant eye from a specimen at the Queensland Museum in Brisbane.

Anglerfish

One of the most famous fish in the deepest stretches of the ocean, the aptly-named anglerfish, uses a lighted lure to entice fish swimming in the eternal night of the deep-sea. Although females usually only grow to about 8 inches, that is titanic compared to males. The life of a male anglerfish is not one of excitement, as they are reduced to a tiny parasitic stub attached to the female. The male gets to feed from the female, while the female does not need to worry about finding a mate with an attached “sperm-bank”. It is a win-win in a very harsh environment. The lure that attracts fish to the female’s toothy maw is actually an organ that contains millions of light-producing bacteria.

The sad existence of the male anglerfish, a parasite whose dragged everywhere by his lady for reproduction sake. Photo taken at the Natural History Museum in London.

Cookiecutter shark

When we think of the fearsome jaws of a shark, we often conjure up the gaping jaws of the great white. But the cookiecutter shark is infamous for its circular jaws and serrated bottom teeth that cut perfect, cookie cutter-like holes into its unsuspecting prey. It uses suction to attach to larger fish and then rotates its body to pop out the circular plug of flesh, scarring everything from marlins to dolphins and seals. Thankfully it usually hangs out below 3,200 feet during the day, far away from human swimmers. It uses its green eyes to filter light in the darkness.

What fearsome teeth you have: the cookiecutter shark’s trademark rows of flesh-slicing teeth. Photo taken at the Natural History Museum in London.

Hope you enjoyed this deep dive into the abyss. Stay tuned for the second installment highlighting more of the frightening, oddball creatures that call the deepest, darkest reaches of the ocean home.

All photographs and art done by Jack Tamisiea.

Sources:

https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/discover-fish/species-profiles/hexanchus-griseus/

https://www.livescience.com/57856-mismatched-eyes-help-cockeyed-squid-survive.html

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2013/10/131022-giant-oarfish-facts-sea-serpents/

https://ocean.si.edu/ecosystems/deep-sea/deep-sea

https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/invertebrates/g/giant-squid/

https://www.montereybayaquarium.org/animal-guide/fishes/deep-sea-anglerfish

https://www.floridamuseum.ufl.edu/discover-fish/species-profiles/isistius-brasiliensis/

Jaws

Examining the Jaws that Power Some of the Strongest Bites in Natural History

Thylacoleo, the “marsupial lion”, had teeth designed like bolt-cutters that would spell doom for the giant kangaroos of its day.

Jaws are one of the most important evolutionary traits of the animal kingdom. They have been around since the armored fish of the Silurian Period some 440 million years ago. Since then they have changed shapes and functions, grown and retracted, but have always provided the key to animal survival. Without jaws, most vertebrate animals could not catch food, defend themselves, or even chew.

I have always had a fascination with the more menacing end of predatory animals. Large teeth attached to a scary animal’s maw tend to spark our collective imagination as evidenced by the fame of T. rex and the success of Jaws, aptly named for the fictitious sharks’ scariest feature. In this article, I will take a look at four of the strongest bites from the history of our planet, spanning the past 360 million years.

Dunkleosteus terrelli: : “The Shark-Splitter”

This painting of Dunkleosteus’ nightmare head armor is based on a fossil from the Field Museum in Chicago.

Period: Devonian (419 - 360 million years ago)

Place: North America

Long before sharks were the most feared creatures in the sea, Dunkleosteus terrelli and his armored fish brethren (a group called arthrodires) were the bullies of the ocean. With armor covering their heads and an estimated size of almost 20 feet, Dunkleosteus’ bite could severe early sharks and other armored fish into pieces. Their bites were even strong enough to dispatch each other in what must have been the must-see heavyweight bought of the Devonian period.

Instead of teeth, Dunkleosteus had fangs that were extended parts of the bony plates covering the skull. These fangs sharpened against each other every time the monster opened or shut its jaws. Dunkleosteus is considered to have one of the strongest bites ever thanks to these “self-sharpening fangs” and a morphological adaptation that overlooked the fish’s jaws growing longer and the fangs becoming sturdier as the creature aged into the dominant aquatic predator of its day. Based on a 2006 study, Dunkleosteus had a bite force of 11,000 pounds with the tip of the fang generating a nightmare inducing 80,000 pounds per square inch (psi), rivaling even the legendary bite of our next creature. What’s more, the study also estimated that the creature could open its death trap mouth in one fiftieth of a second, capable of sucking in smaller prey to a much slower death inside Dunkleosteus’ stomach.

With a bite this powerful and quick, Dunkleosteus was immune to everything in the sea except a larger Dunkleosteus. Skulls from the magnificent early kings of the ocean have been found throughout North America with holes inches deep, clearly from the fangs of another Dunkleosteus.

Tyrannosaurus Rex: “King Tyrant Lizard”

This Tyrannosaurus rex skull is based on the skull of the T-Rex dueling a Triceratops in the main hall of the Los Angeles Museum of Natural History.

Period: Cretaceous (145 - 66 million years ago).

Place: North America

The most famous predator to ever roam earth has the bite to back up the moniker “King Tyrant Lizard”. Its bite could not only subjugate any other dinosaur (even other tyrannosaurs) it came across, but it was strong enough to make bones literally explode when it clamped down on them.

A 2012 study constructed a 3D model of T. rex’s skull, complete with reconstructed jaw muscles using muscular information from both birds and crocodiles (birds are direct descendants of T. rex and other dinosaurs while crocodiles are a close cousin of the dinosaur group). This model led scientists to predict a maximum bite force of around 12,800 pounds (roughly their body weight), out-biting Dunkleosteus by 1,800 pounds. This bite force makes T. rex not only the king of the dinosaurs, but also the hardest biting land animal ever.*

The 2012 estimate for T. rex’s bite force is six to seven times that of another famous predatory dinosaur, Allosaurus, who ruled North America during the Jurassic period before the Tyrannosaur took the throne. The thing that sets T. rex’s bite apart is that the animal possessed large muscles that controlled the opening and closing of the jaws. These muscles would grow throughout the animal’s life, changing T. rex from an agile shallow-skulled predator to the bone-crushing top of the food chain as it matured. This had an important evolutionary advantage for the “king tyrant lizard” as juveniles hunted smaller animals and adults tackled the huge herbivores of the day, like Triceratops, reducing competition between the two.

But T. rex still had to fear other Tyrannosaurs. Similar to Dunkleosteus, when you’re the biggest, baddest creature around, even members of your own species are on the menu. In 2015, T. rex bones were found with tooth marks that patterned the mighty bite of another T. rex, concrete evidence of cannibalistic behavior in the tyrant lizard. When you’re at the top, it takes something pretty incredible to knock you off the summit. The bite of another T. rex is for sure incredible.

*Two ancient aquatic creatures have way more powerful bites estimates than T. rex. The prehistoric giant crocodile Deinosuchus, which preyed upon dinosaurs much like how crocodiles attack wildebeest today, had an estimated bite of 23,000 pounds. Megalodon, the largest shark ever, had an estimated bite force of 41,000 pounds, which comes in handy when hunting whales.

Thylacoleo carnifex: “Real-life Drop Bear”

Thylacoleo carnifex is nicknamed the “marsupial lion” for its big cat-like appearance and predatory prowess. In reality, it had a much more fearsome bite than even the king of the jungle.

Period: Pleistocene (2.6 million - 11,700 years ago)

Place: Australia

Thylacoleo carnifex is the largest carnivorous marsupial ever discovered. It terrorized a primeval Australia dominated by megafauna like giant kangaroos and rhino-sized wombat relatives. Many of these gargantuan creatures were the unaware target of a Thylacoleo ambush from above.

Based on a 2005 study, Thylacoleo had the strongest bite of any mammal to have ever existed. A large part of this has to do with the way its jaws and teeth were structured. Thylacoleo had enlarged, blade-like cheek teeth that developed in place of the posterior molars at the back of the animal’s mouth. In addition to the shearing blades at the side of its mouth, Thylacoleo also had huge incisors at the front of the jaw to stab its prey. Its skull was perfect for generating power. It was wide and heavy, with a short snout, and would have been packed inside thick muscles when the creature was alive.

As a marsupial, the fact that Thylacoleo had a much stronger bite compared to lions and tigers may not be as surprising as one initially believes. Some scientists believe that placental mammals, a group that includes most modern mammals from bats to humans, gave up some of the muscular strength in their heads as compensation for a larger brain cavity as they advanced past marsupials. Thylacoleo, a cold-blooded killer in a monstrous competition with giant lizards, thundering predatory birds, and terrestrial crocodiles (not to mention the brute strength of the massive animals on the menu), needed all the muscle it could get for its bite to move it to the top of the food chain. Placentals may have adapted smarter hunting strategies, but Thylacoleo was effective (at least until its prey disappeared during somewhat mysterious megafaunal die-off over the last 100,000 years) enough with pure biting power.

Thylacoleo needed all of this biting power because it was attacking creatures much bigger than itself. It also had another killer trait that was almost foolproof if the creature couldn’t get its jaws around something. It had a switchblade-like thumb claw that could disembowel its prey. They also relied on ambush and could drop down from trees at any second to dispose of a giant kangaroo. In this sense, they truly were real-life equivalents of the mythical predatory koalas known in Australian lore as “Drop Bears”.

Nile Crocodile: “Quick-Strike Kings of the Nile”

Nile Crocodile skull belonging to the dominant ambush hunter of Africa. Its jaws are capable of latching onto a wildebeest and dragging them into the water.

Period: Present Day

Place: Africa

We end our list with crocodiles, the dominant biters of today. Saltwater crocodiles, the largest living species of crocodile, have a bite force of 3,700 psi according to a 2012 study conducted on many different species of crocodilians at the St. Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park. The fact that the group has been around for over 85 million years is largely thanks to the effective and powerful bites that have helped them dominate the water’s edge.

Nile crocodiles (Crocodylus niloticus), in particular, have a ferocious snap to go with their long jaws and teeth. Some estimate their bite force at 5,000 psi, surpassing the slightly larger saltwater crocodile and American alligator for strongest living crocodile bite. In comparison, our bite generates a measly 162 psi. The Nile crocodile is closer to the lower range of a T. rex bite. Nile crocodiles can thank their large jaw abductor muscles that can “snap” their mouth shut in an instant when a wildebeest takes a drink from their watering hole.

The incredibly strong bite force is what unites all crocodiles and is what has helped them dominate their niche for longer than just about any other animal in our planet’s long and extraordinary history. They have also remained relatively unchanged with long jaws, studded with sharp teeth, lurking just below the water’s surface.

All artwork by Jack Tamisiea.

Sources:

https://www.earthtouchnews.com/discoveries/fossils/the-nasty-eating-habits-of-prehistorys-meanest-fish/

https://phys.org/news/2006-11-ancient-predator-strongest-fish-rivaling.html

https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/the-tyrannosaurus-rexs-dangerous-and-deadly-bite-37252918/

https://www.huffingtonpost.com.au/entry/t-rex-dinosaurs-cannibal_n_5637b12be4b00aa54a4efba0

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4409039.stm

http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/science/nature/4409039.stm

https://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2012/03/120315-crocodiles-bite-force-erickson-science-plos-one-strongest/

https://www.sciencefocus.com/nature/top-10-which-animals-have-the-strongest-bite/

Studied Abroad: Kronosaurus queenslandicus

The most spectacular fossil of Queensland’s famed prehistoric reptile is displayed almost 10,000 miles away and locked in plaster. This is the remarkable tale of a wayward Australian sea monster at Harvard known as “Plasterosaurus.”

Kronosaurus queenslandicus once terrorized the Early Cretaceous inland seas of Queensland, Australia with jaws so big it could make the shark from Jaws blush. It looked something like a small whale with the jaws of a crocodile and would use its four paddles to fly through Australia’s primeval waters along with the many other large aquatic reptiles of its day. This is a good chance to address the confusing nature of Mesozoic sea reptile classification. Kronosaurus is the largest known pliosaur, a group with big heads and short necks. Pliosaurs are part of the overarching and similarly-named plesiosaur group. Thanks to museum displays and dinosaur books, most of us think of plesiosaurs as sea creatures with small heads and long necks, such as Plesiosaurus, the group’s poster boy. In actuality, Plesiosaurs contain both the long-necked and large head varieties, and Kronosaurus definitely falls in the latter group.

Named after the Greek Titan Kronos, famous for devouring his offspring, Kronosaurus would have been a similar all-devouring presence, eating everything from its fellow marine reptiles to ammonites, with its large, crushing teeth capable of crushing their hard shells. Its head that yielded its mouth full of daggers accounts for almost one fourth of its predicted overall length.

Kronosaurus’ huge teeth were the fuel of nightmares for the creatures that lived alongside it in Queensland’s Cretaceous waters. These teeth belong to the Harvard Kronosaurus.

The massive sea monster was named in 1901 after the discovery of a fossilized piece of jaw. It was originally thought to be from a creature in the dolphin-like Ichthyosaur group, before being classified correctly as a pliosaur in 1924. This jaw fragment is the type specimen (first described specimen for a species) of Kronosaurus queenslandicus, and still resides in the collection of the Queensland Museum, in Brisbane. It is a remarkably important fossil, but nowhere near the tremendous skeleton blown out of the Queensland limestone in the early 1930s.

William Schevill was a graduate student at Harvard when he went on a collecting trip to Australia for Harvard’s Museum of Contemporary Zoology (MCZ) in 1931. Giant fossil reptiles could not have been further from Schevill’s mind when he originally set out on the expedition, as the main goal was to simply collect specimens of Australia’s remarkable wildlife that the MCZ was lacking. Most importantly the museum wanted marsupials, from koalas to the “Tasmanian wolf” or thylacine as it was about to go extinct in the next five years. Schevill ended up bringing back perhaps the most iconic specimen in the Museum’s collection.

After most of his group had departed with preserved marsupials, Schevill was alerted by a rancher to something strange sticking out of the ground on his property near Hughenden, Queensland. That something ended up being the bones of the most complete Kronosaurus skeleton ever discovered. But there was the big problem of breaking the bones out of the solid limestone that entombed them. Schevill convinced a British migrant, who was knowledgeable about explosives, to help blast the limestone tomb into large blocks. According to author Nancy Pick writing about the MCZ in the book The Rarest of the Rare, Schevill’s helping hand was nicknamed the maniac because of rumors that he had murdered somebody. Unsurprisingly, he did end up being skilled in explosives and used dynamite to blast out the Kronosaurus skeleton into several large blocks that weighed around six tons each.

Kronosaurus’ story takes a bit of a sad turn here as the remarkable skeleton was shipped around the world to Cambridge, Massachusetts. Paleontology imperialism has become a big issue in recent years with the struggle of Mongolia to keep its incredible fossils within its borders and to this day some in Australia must feel dismayed that the most iconic skeleton of Kronosaurus resides in Boston at one of the world’s most renowned universities. For a while, paleontologists in Australia were left only with the jaw fragment as the best specimen was shipped to the Ivy League.

On the other side of the world, Kronosaurus sat in the large limestone blocks gathering dust far away from its home for decades. The skull, with its menacing teeth and great size, was prepared right away while the skeleton lingered in stone. It may still be there if a local businessman interested in sea monsters didn’t offer the museum $10,000 to complete the skeleton restoration. Scientists then reconstructed and displayed the skeleton using the actual bones and plaster to fill in the missing pieces. Plaster accounts for a third of the display.

The Kronosaurus skeleton looms behind the Triceratops skull in the Romer Hall of Vertebrate Paleontology at the Harvard Museum of Natural History.

As with every restoration of a prehistoric creature, the Harvard Kronosaurus is not 100 percent accurate. The skeleton was missing a large part of its backbone, which led to the reconstruction team probably adding in too many vertebrae, making the displayed creature too long at 42 feet. Paleontologists today think the creature was closer to 30 feet in real life.

The fact that the Harvard Kronosaurus is encased in plaster and on the museum’s wall makes re-examining the specimen difficult. Scientist’s have nicknamed it “Plasterosaurus.” Australian scientists have clamored for the specimen to be freed from its plaster encasing and re-examined along with more recent partial finds from Queensland to get a better understanding of what the creature actually looked like and where it should sit in the marine reptile family tree. But the iconic Harvard Kronosaurus is still exhibited with its huge mouth agape along with possibly 8 extra vertebrae. Ironically, while being at the museum made Kronosaurus much more well known to paleontology fans around the world, it is now making it more unknown to the scientists who want to study it.

I have been able to see this magnificent specimen twice in person and was taken aback by its size both times. It is hard to even fit it in one camera shot when you are looking right at it and its huge head makes it obvious why the species has become such a hit at the museum. But Queensland is still crazy about Kronosaurus, even if the most famous specimen is 10,000 miles away. Kronosaurus Korner Museum in Richmond, Queensland houses several large marine reptile fossils and takes people out on fossil digs in the surrounding fossil rich area. A full-size replica of its namesake fossil reptile greets visitors outside the museum with its mouth agape, just like its fossil counterpart at Harvard.

Harvard’s Kronosaurus queenslandicus.

All photographs and art by Jack Tamisiea.

Sources:

https://www.wired.com/2011/06/the-frustrating-legacy-of-plasterosaurus/

https://www.revolvy.com/page/William-E.-Schevill

https://australianmuseum.net.au/learn/australia-over-time/extinct-animals/kronosaurus-queenslandicus/

Queensland Museum Review

Brisbane’s natural history museum showcases an intriguing collection of specimens from across Australia’s most biodiverse state, including a great white shark and some iconic Australian dinosaur tracks.

Nestled in Brisbane’s cultural district, right across the river from bustling downtown Brisbane, the Queensland Museum houses specimens that tell the evolving story of the state of Queensland. The museum was founded by the Queensland Philosophical Society in 1863 inside a windmill. From there it has changed locations several times, eventually landing at Brisbane’s South Bank area in 1986, as well as changed hands, eventually landing in the hands of the Queensland Government. 

Although a relatively smaller museum compared to other natural history museums (and not much to look at from the outside), what the museum lacks in size and stature it makes up for with interesting specimens and strong narrative exhibits. The main foyer, which also houses the shop, has several large sea creatures and a 1920’s aircraft suspended from the ceiling. The airplane belonged to famed Australian aviator, Bert Hinkler. Hinkler was the first pilot to fly solo from England to Australia and was dubbed the “Australian Lone Eagle” (an awesome nickname). It was very cool to see the retro plane contrasted in the rafters with several of Australia’s iconic large sea creatures, including a great white shark, lunging at the plane with jaws agape, and a manta ray soaring through the air with its pectoral fins splayed.

Above: Image 1: Close up of the lower wing and wheel of the plane. Image 2: Great white shark and dolphin suspended near the plane. Image 3: Hinkler’s plane.

After you walk through the large foyer you come across several display cases housing interesting specimens from around Queensland, including a giant crystal, a soaring termite mound, and the trunk of a tree carved by early explorers to Queensland hundreds of years ago. A juvenile great white shark was displayed in a large tank of alcohol, preserved as if it had just been pulled out of the ocean yesterday. Although it pales in comparison to coming across an actual white shark while exploring the reef, there is something very interesting in seeing a real white shark up close and taking in the rows of teeth and the cold, black (“doll eyes” as Quint calls them in the movie Jaws) eyes of the misunderstood marine behemoth. Although Hollywood has painted a deceptively fearsome picture of sharks, the fact is that shark-human encounters (especially with great whites) are very rare and we kill sharks exponentially more than they even attack us (around 100 million sharks are killed each year due to everything from fear to shark fin soup). Getting a chance to see this shark up close was very fascinating because there is still so much we do not know about great white sharks, from their breeding habits to how many of them are still inhabiting our oceans.

Above: various views of the great white shark specimen, including a painting I did afterwards based on the specimen.

The shark was not the only giant ocean creature displayed in this first floor hall. Several large cephalopods inhabit similar tanks to the shark. A diamondback squid, named for the triangular shape of its two fins, and a giant cuttlefish, the largest species of cuttlefish that can change color like the rest of its brethren, occupy one of these tanks. A nearby tank contains a giant squid, a deep-sea denizen of mythic proportions. This squid specimen is aptly giant (its tentacles need to be folded back in order to fit inside of its tank) with an accompanying eye bigger than a balled up fist. The huge eye helps it see in the abyss that it resides in and helps it find prey, which it quickly disposes of with its great beak.

The magnificent eye of the giant squid straight from the abyss.

The final display case of the first floor hall houses the skeleton of Australia’s, and the world’s for that matter, most venomous land snake, the inland taipan, about to strike the skeleton of a rat. The dramatic scene is frozen mid-strike, showing off the articulated tension in the upper-half of the snake as it lunges forward. Inland taipan venom is potent enough to kill several humans, but one does not have to worry about coming across this shy and rare species of snake that lives in semi-arid habitats. Only a couple people have been bitten and none of them have died thanks to quick medical treatment. This display and the shark specimen were my two favorite specimens from the Queensland Museum.

A rat frozen in an attempt to scurry away from the lightning-quick strike of an inland taipan.

After walking past all of the display cases, you arrive at the paleontology exhibit, called Lost Creatures, which houses several dinosaur and megafauna specimens from around Queensland. The exhibit proceeds in chronological order, from Australia’s early days as part of the supercontinent Gondwana through the evolution of Australian dinosaurs and then into the domination of large marsupials during the Pleistocene period. 

Several specimens stood out, including a large swath of dinosaur tracks from Lark Quarry, the site of Dinosaur Stampede National Monument which is the location of the world’s only preserved dinosaur stampede. Part of the actual quarry is displayed at the museum, while a large cast of the rest of the quarry shows the large predatory dinosaur footprint and the resulting chaos that ensued as the herd of herbivores frantically dispersed. In addition to the famous dinosaur tracks, the exhibit also displays the actual fossil of a small ankylosaur (armored dinosaur) called Kunbarrasaurus and a large cast of Muttaburrasaurus, Australia’s famed iguanodon, that acts as the fulcrum of the exhibit. Both of these dinosaurs resided in primeval Queensland and are displayed alongside several other fossils dating from their time, including pterosaurs skeletons that “fly” overhead.

Image 1: Muttaburrasaurus skeleton Image 2: Kunbarrasaurus skeleton with some fossilized patches of skins Image 3: The only evidence of a dinosaur stampede, straight from the Lark Quarry (most prints shown here are from the startled bipedal herbivores).

The second part of the paleontology exhibit focuses on Queensland’s rich history of megafauna, displaying skeletons of giant kangaroos and the skeleton of the largest marsupial ever to lumber across the continent, diprotodon, the precursor to today’s wombats and koalas. My favorite part of this exhibit was the skeleton of megalania, a fearsome giant goanna dating back to this super-sized era of earth’s animals. The museum does a great job of displaying how fearsome this creature would have been to encounter, displaying its bones alongside the skeletons of a Komodo dragon and a crocodile monitor (which has eerily long teeth itself), the two largest species of living lizards. Both skeletons are dwarfed by megalania’s skeleton. This fearsome beast has been found with giant kangaroo bones inside its gut, which has led to widespread belief that these monster lizards fed on the monster marsupials they shared the Pleistocene outback with. It is also hypothesized that megalania was probably venomous like the monitor lizards of today. This venom would have helped them tackle larger prey.

Megalania is the giant killer lizard from Queensland’s past. In the back of the picture to the left you can see a Komodo dragons skeleton, roughly the length of megalania’s tail for scale.

Going up to the second level, visitors pass a large amount of construction and a fun case of mammal skulls that allows visitors to test their knowledge by trying to match the skulls with the correct species. On the second floor is the Wild State exhibit. Queensland truly is a wild state (the most biodiverse of Australia’s six states) housing 13 different terrestrial bioregions (ecologically and geographically defined regions larger than an ecosystem) and 14 different marine bioregions. These bioregions serve as home to 70 percent of Australia’s mammal species, 80 percent of its bird species, half of its reptiles and amphibians and 8,000 different species of plants according to a figure outside of the exhibit. To quickly put these numbers in perspective, Australia is the number one mega-diverse country in terms of the amount of endemic vertebrate species in the whole world, which makes Queensland’s diversity that much more astounding.

Some amazing statistics about Queensland’s biodiversity as Australia’s most mega-diverse state.

The Wild State exhibit does a great job of showcasing this diversity by displaying many of Queensland’s animal species in a sleek modern area, including some with accompanying habitat displays. The animals range from the giant perentie lizard, Australia’s current largest lizard now that the Megalania is no longer around, to dozens of butterfly and moth species, to flying possums, and to the dugongs that feed on the seagrass in Queensland’s estuaries. There is a very cool Great Barrier Reef display housing several species of large tropical fish and great big sea turtles.

The Queensland Museum is perfect for locals and tourists alike because it displays several incredible specimens that tell Queensland’s wild story from the mega beasts that used to call it home to the mega-diverse state it has become. The museum is a source of pride for native Queenslanders, as well as a great source of education and inspiration for all visitors. Besides the fact that it is the rare free museum that delivers quality, it also displays several unique specimens I had never seen before. Ultimately, the museum never strays far from the central goal of relaying Queensland’s remarkable natural history journey. 

Pictures and art all by Jack Tamisiea

Australian Museum Review

Killer Marsupials, fearsome crocodiles, and hundreds of Australia’s natural treasures highlight Sydney’s natural history museum.

One of the first things I did when I got off the plane in Australia was head to Sydney’s Australian Museum, a treasure trove of Australian and natural history artifacts. As the continent’s first public museum, opening in 1827, its main goal was displaying rare and intriguing natural specimens. In the 192 years since its humble beginning in the city’s old post office, the collection has swelled in size and relocated several times, eventually settling into its current location outside of Hyde Park in 1846. The building has continued to expand in order to better serve its scientific and research goals. The future could not be brighter for the museum. In 2018 the museum received $50 million to improve exhibit halls, and will welcome one of the largest King Tut exhibits ever in early 2021 to mark the centenary of the pharaoh’s discovery.

The increased flow of funds and interest in the museum will do wonders for the museum and its public displays. Although a new modern wing was added in 2008, several of the exhibits inside are dated and certain specimens (especially taxidermy mammals) are literally busting at the seams in their animal exhibit. But the strength of the museum is its very interesting and peculiar collection of Australian natural history items, ranging from a huge skeleton of a thundering diprotodon to a morbidly-wonderful horse skeleton bucking its skeleton rider into the air.

The Australian Museum was hosting a traveling exhibit about whales while I was there and had an interesting display of whale skulls near the entrance to the main foyer. The species of whales and porpoises represented by these skulls ran the whole gamut, from the thin-snouted, needle-toothed South Asian river dolphin to the hulking skull and thick, curved teeth of the killer whale. This display was an interesting introduction to the museum.

From left to right: killer whale skull, short-beaked common dolphin skull, South Asian river dolphin skull and Cuvier’s beaked whale skull

After entering the main foyer, adorned with a huge inflatable whale, I made my way through both the Wild Planet and Indigenous Australia galleries. Some of the aforementioned taxidermy was worn out, making for a few depressing-looking stuffed kangaroos and wallabies, but the abundance and amount of Australian animals was impressive for someone not familiar with these creatures. The taxidermy was supplemented with some impressive skeletons including a whale suspended from the ceiling, an Asian elephant, and a hippopotamus displaying its gnarly tusks. The Indigenous Peoples exhibit gave an interesting overview of their culture through many pieces of art on wood and some less traditional media, like the bill of a sawfish.

Up the stairs is the Dinosaur exhibit, which contains several very cool set pieces like the theropod vs. sauropod battle that greets you as you enter, a cast of gigantosaurus, and coolest of all, a life-size model of a dissected Tyrannosaurus rex, made for the 2015 National Geographic special, full of corn-syrup blood and rubbery organs. But the exhibit’s information was not spaced out making some specimens and information seem cluttered. Several of the models were dated, especially the very much reptilian, Jurassic Park-era raptor models near the end of the hall, lacking any semblance of feathers we now know they had. 

I would have loved to see more space dedicated to Australian dinosaurs. The only big Australian specimen of the exhibit was a very cool skeleton of the herbivorous muttaburrasaurus. The exhibit was trying to tackle the complete essence of dinosaurs, which is a very fair goal for a dinosaur exhibit, but it comes off a bit unoriginal. It would have been awesome to see more of Australia’s very cool and unique dinosaur history displayed.

Images Above: Image 1: Cool view of the sauropod-carnivore duel that took place in Northern Africa millions of years ago. Image 2: A life-size T-rex “cadaver” after the televised autopsy, missing an eye, a tooth, and the contents of its guts. Image 3: Muttaburrasaurus skeleton, one of the few Australian dinosaurs displayed.

Surviving Australia was one of the museum’s highlights. Located on the same floor as the dinosaur exhibit, the exhibit offered the Australian-themed exhibition I had been hoping for, exploring Australia’s weird, wonderful, and often times deadly inhabitants since the end of the dinosaurs. Some highlights centered around the bones and models of several famed Australian megafauna: a giant horned turtle with a spiked tail, resembling a creature straight out of Pokemon, a huge duck known by the fantastic name “Demon Duck of Doom”, a giant monitor lizard (more about them in future pieces), and, of course, the giant marsupials. 

The exhibit did a nice job of complementing bones and skeletons of the marsupials with life-like models (albeit older models with some patchy fur) of what these creatures could have looked like in life. These included the large wolf-like prehistoric thylacine, giant short-faced kangaroo, and the largest marsupial ever, diprotodon, a fantastic cross between a rhino and its modern cousin, the wombat. But the most interesting ancient marsupial displayed to me was the ferocious thylacoleo, a lion-sized ball of muscle and teeth that fed on the giant kangaroos and wombats of its day. The museum displays its fossilized jaws which may have equipped thylacoleo with the strongest bite of any mammal ever. All of these monster marsupials make prehistoric Australia seem like a fantastically strange and treacherous land, which is clearly the exhibit’s goal.

Image 1: Thylacoleo is also known as the marsupial lion and has the bone-crushing bite to back that up! Image 2: Thylacoleo’s murder weapons were its jaws (lower jaw shown here) which it used to dispatch other megafauna, like giant kangaroos. Image 3: a giant short-faced kangaroo skeleton.

A menacing look at the museum’s diprotodon model

The museum’s diprotodon skeleton perched above the rest of Surviving Australia

The rest of the Surviving Australia exhibit contains awesome specimens of the continent’s modern natural marvels, including a spectacular saltwater crocodile that truly lets you take in the species’ immense size. In the next room are interesting displays about the continent’s marine wonders, ranging from the Great Barrier Reef to penguins. On level three, there is a great display of the many unique birds that call Australia home. 

The standout exhibit at the museum was the 200 Treasures of the Australian Museum, taking up the lower two floors of the Westpac Long Gallery. The second floor of the exhibit contains information on 100 people who have had significant impact on Australian scientific discovery, along with display cases depicting specimens from every department at the museum. The other half of the 200 is on the first floor, where 100 of the museum’s standout specimens are displayed together in large exhibit cases. The items were selected for historical significance, scientific importance, rarity, or just plain wonder, like an opalized (petrified with the mineral opal) plesiosaur skeleton that shimmered in soft hues of pink and gold. 

A few other specimens worth mentioning are the large Irish elk skeleton perched off the second floor balcony; a large gold nugget found in Australia; specimens and equipment from an early Australian Antarctic expedition, including a beaten-up sled and a penguin; and a thylacine, or Tasmanian tiger, pup embalmed in a jar. One interesting story I will take away from this exhibit was conveyed by a large red chair towards the front of the exhibit. It belonged to Gerard Krefft, an early museum director who was ousted over his belief of evolution by creationist museum trustees. Krefft decided to make a statement with his exit, refusing to leave his office or his chair. The trustees’ solution was to hire two prize-fighters who broke down the door to his office, picked up the chair and carried him out.

Image 1: The main exhibit hall containing the Australian Museum’s treasures, including the skeleton of an Irish elk, one of the largest deer species in history. Image 2: The opalized remains of an Australian plesiosaur. Image 3: Former museum director Gerard Krefft’s chair, which he was carried out on when he was ousted from the museum. Image 4: A preserved Tasmanian tiger pup from 1866. These large marsupial carnivores were hunted to extinction last century.

A piece containing a few of my favorite specimens from the exhibit. The only two not pictured above are a stuffed emperor penguin from an early Australian Antarctic expedition (top right) and the skull from the giant turtle, Meiolania (bottom left), mentioned earlier in the piece.

Stories like Krefft’s, and the incredible specimens collected by the museum in both Australia and around the world, are what I took away from the Australian Museum. It is at its best when it plays on Australia’s natural history in the Surviving Australia exhibit, and its own history, in 200 Treasures. It is worth a visit for both natural history lovers and those who are just curious about Australia. 

All photographs and art in this piece was taken or created by Jack Tamisiea