Useless Disturbing Nature Facts 3 - Don't Time Travel, Kids

In past issues of Useless Disturbing Nature Facts, I talked about plants that turn into rolling spheres, serial killer plants and why eagles should not be revered as much as they are. But now it's time to do what everyone does on New Year's Eve - gaze with hazy, cider-blurred eyes back on the previous years. If there's anything that fossils have taught us, it's that Mother Nature was hitting the wine spritzers pretty hard even before humanity came about, because nothing we have now matches up to the insanity that used to prowl the world. These creatures are probably the reason we shoudln't be cloning mammoths, because once the scientists get it into their heads to try and ressurect these guys, we might as well declare ourselves extinct immediately.

Ladies and gentlemen, without much in the way of further preamble, Useless Disturbing Nature Facts 3 - Don't Time Travel, Kids.

• Xiphactinus, or the Bulldog Fish, was a voracious fish from the Cretacious that liked to swallow it's prey whole. It's method of attack was to simply barrel out of depths exceeding 60km/h, or over 40 mph. This means that, in exceptionally clear water with visibility of 100 feet or so, it would still be visible for only two seconds before it ate you.
• Anomalocaris, from the Cambrian era, was the top predator of it's time. This was because it had one feature its primitive trilobite prey didn't - eyes. Wheras Trilobites could only detect the difference between light and dark, anomalocaris had extremely good vision, with 30'000 lenses in it's compound eyes - a modern dragonfly only has 28'000.
• Hatzegopteryx was a Cretaceous azhdarchid pterosaur, related to quetzalcoatlus. It was the size of a giraffe, had a 10-metre wingspan and lived in Romania. But the most horrifying thing about it was that it ate dinosaurs - specifically, magyarosaurus, a dwarf sauropod no bigger than a pony. If this thing was alive today, it would happily swallow humans whole like they were popcorn.
• It was long thought that Sinornithosaurus, a species of winged gliding dinosaur, was venomous. Grooves in it's jawbone were believed to indicate the presence of venom glands, similar to modern gila monsters and rear-fanged snakes, although this has been disputed. If this were true, it would have made sinornithosaurus the world's first-known venomous dinosaur. No, the Jurassic Park version of dilophosaurus doesn't count.
• Speaking of Jurassic Park, if you thought the mosasaurus in that was scary, Tylosaurus was infinitely worse. It grew up to 50 feet in length and would eat anything else in the ocean - including each other. And fossil discoveries have shown something worse - in order to protect their vulnerable young, tylosaurus would swim in gangs. If one was bad, then imagine how fucked you'd be if you met a whole crowd of them.
• Megalania or varanus priscus was a distant cousin of the Komodo dragon, and much worse. It could grow as big as 18 feet long, much larger than the average 8.5ft of Komodos, sprinted at about 6.7mph and was possibly venemous. The latter fact, if true, would have made it the biggest known venemous vertebrate animal to ever exist. Some people think megalania might be still alive today - let's hope they're wrong.
• Hyneria was a predatory fish from the Devonian period, growing as long as 8.2 feet in length and weighting two tonnes. It fed on early amphibians like hynerpeton, and was related to lungfish in that it was a lobe-finned fish, with pectoral fins similar in structure to limbs rather than the ray-shaped structures of most modern fish. It's believed that, like a killer whale, hyneria could beach itself and then 'walk' on land for a bit to snag prey on the shore, thanks to it's primitive lung.
• On the subject of fish, Stethacanthus is a primitve shark from the same time as hyneria, but was often preyed upon by the latter. It gets its name of the "Ironing-board shark" from the strange shape of its dorsal fin - tothis day, nobody knows why it would evolve such a feature. 
• And finally, where would we be in prehistory without Tyrannosaurus rex? You know the bit in Jurassic Park where Grant was all like "It can't see us if we don't move"? Yeah, that's bullshit. T. rex had eyes set in the side of it's head but faced partially forwards, giving it excellent binocular vision and depth perception as well as good general all-around vision. On top of this, scans of the brain cavity have determined that it might have been as smart as a dog, considering all the information it had to deal with in it's daily life. So in reality, the T. rex would have seen Grant and the stpid screamy girl, and then it would have eaten them. Sorry, JP, fans.

Want more UDNF? Just ask! Next time - the ants that have to keep moving, and other bizzare insects and arachnids!