Do dinosaurs exist in our time, do dinosaurs exist in our time. Modern reptiles are descendants of dinosaurs Close relatives of dinosaurs

We think we own the heavens. But a group of creatures capable of flight remains the object of envy air force created by man. These birds are descendants of dinosaurs. They inhabit all ecosystems the globe including the interior of Antarctica.

Origin of birds long time remained the subject of lively debate. Over the foreseeable period of time, several scientific versions of the origin and family ties birds and the emergence of their flight, and for more than a hundred years they were purely hypothetical.

1. A heron on a fishing trip. (Photo by Attila Kovacs):

The hypothesis about the origin of birds from dinosaurs was first put forward in 1868 by Thomas Huxley. It was based on a comparison of the structure of Archeopteryx, an animal that lived about 150 million years ago in the Upper Jurassic. He had the characteristics of a typical reptile - a special structure of the pelvis and ribs, teeth, clawed paws and a long, like a lizard, tail. At the same time, the fossils had well-preserved imprints of flight wings, similar to those of modern birds.

2. A flock of white geese. (Photo by Jim Scalzo):

Birds have a lot in common with dinosaurs common features in skeletal structure. Among the possible closest relatives of birds, avimim is also considered - a small predatory dinosaur from Cretaceous.

3. Pelican feeds her cubs. (Photo by Monika Skkolimowska):

The first attempt to systematize animals was made in the 4th century BC. e. the Greek scientist Aristotle - in his writings "On the Parts of Animals" and "On the Origin of Animals", he singled out all the birds known to him in the "higher genus" Ornithes. Despite the obvious imperfection of this system, until the second half of the 17th century, no new attempts were made to classify the animal world. Only to late XIX century, new research laid the foundation for modern ideas about the bird class system.

4. Heron. (Photo by Biju Boro):

Birds are everywhere, even in Antarctica. For example, the snow petrel nests in the depths of this continent at a distance of up to 440 km from the coast. Along the edges of the Antarctic Shield, penguins (imperial, Adélie), giant petrel, south polar skua nest in places.

5 Sandhill Cranes (Photo by Sam Greenwood):

Birds also inhabit the most waterless deserts and mountains, up to the border of eternal snows. During migrations, flocks of flying geese and cranes were sometimes observed at an altitude of 7000-9000 m. In 1973, an African vulture collided with a civilian aircraft over Côte d'Ivoire at an altitude of 11,277 meters.

6. Gray heron on a fishing trip. (Photo by Attila Kovacs):

Several families of birds have adapted to life at sea. Separate types penguins dive to a depth of 300 m, and according to other information, emperor penguin can reach a depth of 535 meters.

7. Tricolored heron. Chick. (Photo by Rhona Wise):

It is the ability to fly that determines the characteristics of this class of animals, although there are relatively few a large number of(about 60 species) flightless or almost flightless birds, in the course of evolution somehow lost the ability to fly, which their ancestors had.

8 Pelicans (Photo by Amir Cohen):

Flight requires a very large expenditure of muscle energy, so the metabolic rate in birds is extremely high and the need for food is great: its daily norm is 12-28% of the total body weight. If we project these data onto a person, then a 70-kilogram character would have to eat up to 20 kg of food per day, if he were a bird.

9. A duckling is hiding from the rain. (Photo by David L. Ryan):

All species of birds are characterized by the presence of feathers that are not found in other modern animals. Feathers cover the entire body of the bird, with the exception of the beak and distal parts of the hind limbs. It is believed that feathers originated as a result of evolutionary transformations of reptile scales.

10. Gray heron. (Photo by Attila Kovacs):

How many feathers does a bird have? The total number of feathers large species more than small ones. For example, hummingbirds have about 1,000 feathers, gulls have up to 6,000, and swans have 25,000.

11. Robins are waiting for their parents in the nest. (Photo by Frank Rumpenhorst):

The pen is an almost perfect mechanism. It provides the possibility of flight, forming bearing planes (wings, tail), and creates a streamlined body. Feathers protect the skin from mechanical damage. The waterproof and heat-shielding functions of the plumage are very effective.

12. Stilts. (Photo by Sam Yeh):

Like any perfect mechanism, feathers require careful maintenance, and birds spend about 9% of their daily time cleaning their feathers, bathing and dust bathing.

13. Stork. (Photo by Rhona Wise):

Dinosaur descendants don't smell. They do not have sweat glands. Cooling of the body is achieved with the help of a highly developed respiratory system. Birds also cool down when they are in the shade or in the water.

14. Herons. (Photo by Attila Kovacs):

No teeth. It is interesting that modern birds lack teeth - they are partly replaced by the sharp edges of the beak, with which birds capture, hold and sometimes crush food. In connection with the loss of teeth, the task of crushing food was transferred to the stomach.

15. Canada geese. Fight. (Photo by David L. Ryan):

The respiratory system of birds is also characterized by signs of adaptation to flight. This organ system in birds is considered one of the most complex among all animal groups. The more intense the flapping flight, the more intense the breathing process.

16. Small godwit. (Photo by Chris Purnell):

The pulse is also high in birds, and in flight, in comparison with rest, the pulse increases markedly. So, in a sparrow at rest, the pulse is about 460 beats / min, and in flight - about 1000 beats / min!

17. Heron's nest. (Photo by Anupam Nath):

Birds are not stupid animals. A well-developed brain allows birds to develop complex behaviors and adapt to a variety of situations. The most striking demonstration of the mental abilities of birds is the teaching of songbirds to sing, the repetition of human speech by parrots, the methods of obtaining food in a number of species, and the ability of corvids to solve complex problems offered to them in special experiments.

18. 3 small swans. (Photo by Matt Campbell):

The eyes are the most powerful bird apparatus. Many birds see well into the distance (the peregrine falcon is able to see a small bird at a distance of more than 1 km). In some species, the field of view reaches almost 360 °. Vision in birds is noticeably sharper than in other groups of vertebrates - this is explained by a significantly large number of light-sensitive cells in the retina.

19. Dove. (Photo by Dominique Faget):

Sound signals are in the life of birds exclusively importance. They ensure the protection of the feeding and nesting territory from the invasion of strangers, attracting a female to breed offspring, warning relatives and chicks about impending danger. In the language of birds, there are dozens of sound signals (calamities, warnings, food, courtship, mating, aggressive, flocking, nesting, and so on).

Some birds, such as lyrebirds, have a phenomenal ability to imitate all sorts of sounds, ranging from the voices of birds, animals, humans, and ending with various man-made sounds, including playing the flute and even the sounds of car alarms and chainsaws.

20. Goose family. (Photo by Tom Dorsey):

Flight! The flight of birds is usually divided into two main types: active (waving) and passive (soaring). Birds usually use not one type of flight, but combine them. The flapping of the wings is followed by phases when the wing does not move: this is a gliding flight, or soaring. Such a flight is characteristic mainly for birds of medium and large sizes, with sufficient body weight. Hovering in place relative to the surrounding air is challenging for birds. In fact, hummingbirds are the only group of birds adapted to this.

Birds move along branches, land and water with the help of their hind legs. And also, any bird does not sink in water and swim if necessary.

21. A gray heron is fishing. (Photo by Attila Kovacs):

The migratory routes of some birds consist of many segments between which the birds rest and look for food. The reasons for bird migration are seasonal changes in the environment. The Arctic tern is considered the absolute champion in terms of migration distance, migrating seasonally from the Arctic to the Antarctic, covering a distance of up to 70-90 thousand km in a year! Also, one of the longest migrations in the world, lasting up to 26 thousand km, is made by the round-nosed phalarope.

Observation of the flight of birds prompted people to invent the first aircraft, and its further study continues to influence the development of modern aviation.

22. White stork nest on a cell tower. (Photo by Paul Hanna):

Everyone loved dinosaurs as a child, and almost everyone just adored Jurassic Park. But not many people know that almost everything that tells us about dinosaurs Mass culture- not true. In this compilation, we have collected the most popular misconceptions about dinosaurs.

Dinosaurs were the largest creatures ever to have lived on earth.

First, not all dinosaurs were big. Of course, some of them reached quite serious sizes. But these were isolated species. In addition to them, there were many less impressive dinosaurs, the size of a sheep, dog or chicken, for example. The smallest dinosaur known to science weighed about 200 grams. Secondly: you will be surprised, but the largest animal that has ever existed on Earth is our contemporary with you - this is the blue whale. So if you were upset that you could never see a live megaladon, you have every chance of seeing a much larger giant alive.

All dinosaurs lived in the tropics

This myth stems from the fact that the climate used to be much warmer than it is now. And based on this, some seriously believe that almost all the land was then covered with thick rainforests. In reality, of course, this is not the case. During the existence of dinosaurs, however, as now, there were already deserts, and plains, and ordinary forests, and jungles on Earth, of course. Moreover, over the millions of years that dinosaurs walked on our planet, the landscape, like the climate, has constantly changed. And dinosaurs successfully mastered the entire spectrum of ecosystems.

Dinosaurs were dumb creatures with tiny brains.

To judge the intelligence of creatures that lived 100 million years ago, of which only petrified remains have survived, is an extremely thankless task. The only thing we can know more or less exactly is the size of their brains. And, of course, it was different for all dinosaurs, both in absolute value and relative to body size. The same stegosaurus, often ridiculed for its tiny brain, actually had a brain the size of Walnut and weighing about 70 grams. On the other hand, our favorite four-legged friends, dogs, have brains that are about the same size. But dogs weigh a maximum of 100 kilograms, which is 20 times less than a stegosaurus weighed. But the brain of a tyrannosaurus rex, for example, was three times larger than the brain of a dolphin. But in terms of body size, it roughly corresponds to the brain of modern reptiles.

The Jurassic period is the "golden age" of the dinosaurs.

Well, firstly: the greatest diversification of dinosaur varieties, according to statistical studies, was not in the Jurassic, but in the late Cretaceous period. And secondly: even this obvious diversity is nothing more than an illusion, since it is the rocks of the Late Cretaceous period that are today more studied than the rocks of other periods. mesozoic era. So while with full certainty it is impossible to say when there were more dinosaurs.

Tyrannosaurus Rex is the largest carnivore ever to walk the earth.

Once again, a myth to which we are entirely indebted to popular culture. The Tyrannosaurus rex has become so often mentioned that it has practically become the personification of the brand in general for all dinosaurs. It’s just that with the word “dinosaur”, most will imagine either a tyrannosaurus rex or a triceratops in their head. So it is the tyrannosaurus rex that is often called the largest and most dangerous of all known to science. ground predators. We will return to its danger, but for now let's talk about size. Today it is already absolutely certain that the tyrannosaurus rex was not the largest land predator in history. The largest skeleton found is 12.3 meters long. While the spinosaurus reached 16 meters in length. But these two giants have never met, since the tyrannosaurus rex is “younger” than its competitor by more than 30 million years. And, of course, that all these years evolution has not stood still, therefore, in many respects, the tyrannosaurus rex looks like a much more advanced “killing machine” than its more ancient counterpart.

Dinosaurs were a dead end branch of evolution

The fact that they did not build cities and did not arrange wars for resources does not mean that they were a dead end branch of evolution. Dinosaurs were perfectly integrated into the then environment. They were the dominant species on the planet and, in fact, masters not only of the earth, but also of the air and the sea. Although objectively speaking, neither marine reptiles nor flying pangolins can be called dinosaurs, but still, they were much more related than us and dolphins, for example. And yet. People have been evolving for only two million years and have already come close to global crises and the threat of total destruction of themselves. While the dinosaurs evolved perfectly perfectly over the course of 135 million years, and if not for their independent global cataclysms may have continued to live to this day.

In the time when dinosaurs lived, all mammals were the size of a mouse.

No, even then there were much more major representatives order of mammals. Here, however, it is worth immediately making a reservation: depending on what to consider large size. Of course, if we talk about the size of a mammoth, then, of course, there were no such mammals at the time of the dinosaurs. In general, the average size of mammals then did not exceed the size modern cat. However, even then, namely about 125-122 million years ago, there were already such mammals as repenomas, for example. It was about 1 meter long, weighed 12-14 kg, and judging by the remains found, it even ate some small dinosaurs.

All dinosaurs lived only in the equatorial region of the earth, and the finds of their remains in temperate latitudes explained by the movement of the continents

And again no. Yes, over the millions of years of the existence of dinosaurs, not only the climate changed, but also the landscape of the earth. But many modern finds prove that dinosaurs even lived in Antarctica. In fairness, it should be noted that in those days Australia and New Zealand were connected to Antarctica, forming one polar continent. The climate in those days, of course, was much warmer than today, but the dinosaurs who lived there still had to adapt to harsh conditions. weather conditions. In summer, the sun shone on this continent around the clock, and polar night reigned for five months of the year. It is possible that predators and herbivorous dinosaurs were in these areas in the summer, and in winter they migrated to warmer climes to the north.

Dinosaurs died out as a result of a meteorite fall

Contrary to the assurances of many people that this is exactly what happened, this is just one version of what happened. Scientific disputes on the topic of what caused the death of dinosaurs, whether their extinction was sudden or gradual, continue to this day; there is no single point of view. It is known for certain that the extinction of the dinosaurs was only part of the so-called "great extinction" that took place at the same time. Died out with the dinosaurs marine reptiles, flying lizards, many shellfish and a huge amount of small algae. In total, 16% of families of marine animals and 18% of families of land vertebrates died. According to one of the widespread theories, the death of dinosaurs could have occurred due to relatively close to ours. solar system supernova explosion. Such an event could unleash a deadly shower of gamma rays on Earth, and the X-rays ejected by the explosion could sweep away part of earth's atmosphere, forming a hot layer at an altitude of 20-80 km above the surface of the planet.

Velociraptors could reach speeds of up to 100 km/h

In general, the real image of the Velociraptor, which scientists managed to reconstruct, is extremely far from what was shown to us in the Jurassic Park franchise. This is largely due to the fact that when working on the film, the basis was the reconstruction of another dinosaur - Deinonychus, which was previously classified as a genus of Velociraptors. But even the Deinonychus in the movie are double their actual size. As for real velociraptors, they were evolutionarily closer to birds, had plumage, were warm-blooded animals, reached a height of 60-70 cm and weighed about 20 kg. AT this moment there is no scientific evidence to think that velociraptors could run very fast, hunted in packs (all their remains found are separate individuals), and even more so, they had some kind of super-developed intellect. All this is nothing more than a fantasy.

Dinosaurs have captured the imagination of people for centuries.

Arthur Conan Doyle, creator of Sherlock Holmes, published a novel in 1912 called The Lost World. In this novel, the expedition found a place in the remote Venezuelan jungle, where living dinosaurs have allegedly survived to this day. Films such as Jurassic Park and Land of the Lost were clearly inspired by the science fiction of Conan Doyle.

Animated film "Up". The plot of this film also takes place in this lost world, where travelers discover an unknown species of multi-colored dinosaur.

For most of us, living dinosaurs are fantastic. However, some believe that giant dinosaurs still exist today, they just haven't been found yet.

lake monsters

There are hundreds of lakes harboring prehistoric monsters all over the world. Here are the most famous of them: Loch Ness in Scotland, Lake Okanagan in Canada, Lakes Champlain and Nahuel Huapi in Argentina.

Many believe that the monsters supposedly living in these lakes may be prehistoric reptiles that have survived to this day. For example, such as the plesiosaur (an aquatic reptile with a very long neck up to 12 meters) or the ichthyosaur Shonisaurus (shonisaurus sikanniensis), which were as huge as a submarine.

In the remote jungle Central Africa local tribes tell about the existence in this jungle of dinosaurs up to 11 meters long, with brownish-gray skin and a long flexible neck. Many believe that they live in caves, roam the banks of rivers and feed on elephants, hippos and crocodiles.

Roy Makal, a biologist at the University of Chicago who led two expeditions looking for Mokele-Membe, thinks the creature's descriptions are reminiscent of " little dinosaur sauropod."

Despite the fact that last year more than twenty expeditions were carried out in order to search for a "living dinosaur", but no one has yet been found in the area. Unfortunately, there are no photographs, no videos, not even partial remains of the creatures they were looking for, but only oral stories and legends local residents.

Amazing Truth

Of course, the theory that giant dinosaurs still lurk in thick jungles or cold, deep lakes may be wrong, as all evidence suggests they went extinct around 65.5 million years ago. Many of the lakes where dinosaurs are said to hide were formed only about 10,000 years ago.

If dinosaurs had died out not too long ago, say during the reign of Nixon or even during the time of Shakespeare, the possibility that there were a few lone huge dinosaurs left might be plausible. But 65.5 million years is too long for a long-extinct species to survive.

A large number of artifacts have been found that can prove that not all dinosaurs died out as a result of a fatal cataclysm and the ice age that followed it, but were able to survive these cataclysms and lasted much longer than modern science believes.

Although, who knows? As they say: "the ways of the Lord are inscrutable", perhaps prehistoric monsters still roam our land or plow the seas and oceans. Scientists can be wrong too.

However, from a scientific point of view, not all dinosaurs became extinct. Most of us look at dinosaurs every day, and some even live in human homes. Birds are the modern version of dinosaurs, they are the closest descendants of dinosaurs.

Ecology

Modern birds, as strange as it sounds, are "living dinosaurs" with skulls remarkably similar to those of their distant dinosaur ancestors, according to new research.

At first glance, it's hard to imagine that an ordinary sparrow could have anything in common with a Tyrannosaurus Rex. After all, the first is a small bird that weighs less than 30 grams, the second is a giant creature, the size of a school bus, whose weight is neither more nor less, but about 8 tons.

Despite all their external differences, these two species of living creatures are closer relatives than many people think, scientists from Harvard reported. The researchers noticed that the evolution of birds is the result of a sharp turning point in the development of dinosaurs.

Unlike dinosaurs, which took years to reach puberty, birds did things much faster. Some species take as little as 12 weeks to become parents after they are born. This allowed them to keep physical characteristics baby dinosaurs.

"This study was interesting in that it illustrates evolution as an evolving phenomenon,- He speaks Arkhat Abzhanov, Associate Professor of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology. - By changing the biology of some species, nature has created a modern bird - a completely new creature, as well as 10 thousand of its various kinds. Birds are the most successful group of terrestrial vertebrates on the planet today."

The evolution of many characteristics of birds, such as feathers, flight, sternum scutellum, has traditionally been a difficult problem for biologists, the researchers said. Having previously analyzed the fossilized remains of bird-like dinosaurs and primitive birds, their skeletons, eggs and soft tissues, scientists realized that birds are direct descendants of dinosaurs theropods, a group of carnivores that includes velociraptors. A new study has reinforced these assumptions. Scientists were presented with an example of how changes in development played an important role in the origin and evolution of birds.

If you look at the skulls of modern birds and dinosaurs, at first glance it will seem that they are completely different. Dinosaurs had rather elongated snouts with rows of sharp teeth, while, like birds, proportionally more big eyes and brain. Despite this, the skulls of birds and dinosaurs have much more in common than it seems.

Until now, no one in the scientific world has paid much attention to the evolution of bird heads. "There have been a few small studies focused on certain sections of anatomy, but no one has looked at this issue in a general way," the researchers said. "It is interesting that many looked at the origin of certain features that made bird heads special."

To understand the question of the origin of birds, scientists used an unusual method. Using a CT scanner, they scanned dozens of skulls of modern birds and theropods (dinosaurs that are closest to birds), as well as early dinosaur species.

By noting some features, such as eye sockets, intracranial cavities and other skull bones, in each specimen, the scientists were able to trace how the skulls gradually changed shape over millions of years.

“We looked at skulls that are about 250 million years old, the skulls of archosaurs, the group from which crocodiles and alligators evolved, and the skulls of modern birds. Our goal was to study these skulls and follow how they changed to understand what really actually happened in the course of evolution" Abzanov said.

Scientists were surprised by the fact that early dinosaurs, even those that are close relatives of modern birds, went through serious morphological changes with age, when both the skulls of young and adult birds remained very similar.

"In the case of birds, we can see that the adults look almost the same as the chicks of their distant relatives." Abzanov said.

With regard to modern birds, the change is the result of a process known as progenesis, which causes animals to reach sexual maturity earlier. Unlike their dinosaur ancestors, modern birds they mature much faster, so they retained the appearance of the cubs of their ancestors.

The way bird skulls have changed over the course of evolution highlights the variety of evolutionary strategies that birds have used over millions of years.

To what extent we are people, we know well animal world our planet? This question will surprise most people. In reality, there are many scientific papers, which can fully satisfy the curiosity in this area. It seems that in the XXI century there are no and cannot be secrets in the animal world. But it is not so. And nowadays, from time to time, there are reports that say that the animal world is not at all as well studied as it might seem to us.

In the 20th century, various kinds of studies of mysterious animals similar to dragons, or, in scientific terms, dinosaurs that lived on Earth in prehistoric times.

One should not think that a modern person, tired of everyday affairs and worries, suddenly suddenly believed in fairy tales, myths and legends that mention dragons and others. mythical creatures. In fact, reports, for example, about plesiosaurs look quite convincing and are in the field of scientific interests of a number of zoologists.

Are all dinosaurs extinct?

Any modern person knows that prehistoric animals long ago, millions of years ago, disappeared from the face of the Earth. The question why this happened is very interesting. After all, dinosaurs became extinct for a very short period, although they lived on Earth for more than 150 million years. Over such a long period of time, the climate has repeatedly changed on the planet and there have been many other changes to which animals have been able to adapt very successfully.

Dinosaurs disappeared in about 5 million years, that is, very quickly. There are many hypotheses trying to explain this disappearance. One of the scientists, the American geophysicist W. Alvarez, proposed a very original version. In the second half of the 20th century, he studied an underwater canyon in Italy and found in a layer of clay that belonged to the end of the Mesozoic era (it was in that era that the dinosaurs disappeared), increased content iridium - 30 times more than is usually found in the earth's crust.

The fact is that there is not so much iridium in the bowels of the Earth, it is more common in other cosmic bodies. The scientist suggested that at the end of the Mesozoic era, our planet collided with large asteroid, whose diameter was more than 10 km. The asteroid crashed into the Earth at high speed. As a result, the content of iridium in the earth's crust increased, which in itself, however, was not dangerous for dinosaurs.

But when it hit the asteroid, a huge amount of dust rose into the air. The surface of the planet was covered with a dust curtain from the Sun. Due to lack sun rays plants began to die. Many dinosaurs were herbivores and ate about 2 centners of plants per day. They began to die of hunger, which means that predators, in turn, began to lack food. As a result, all dinosaurs became extinct. Of course, this is just one of the hypotheses.

prehistoric creatures- guests from the Mesozoic era

Meanwhile, cryptozoology assures us that many prehistoric animals have not disappeared, but live in our time. Or, at least, lived relatively not so long ago.

XVI century - S. Herberstein served as the Austrian ambassador in Russia, a diplomat, traveler and writer. In his diary, he described people who lived in the forests and kept as pets. big snakes, similar to lizards, with four legs and pointed black bodies.

In the Russian chronicles of the 16th century, there is a record of how “crocodiles” came out of the river located near Novgorod and ate many people. This entry is dated 1582. Of course, it is possible to suspect the ancient chronicler of a hoax, but at that distant time the chroniclers were just chroniclers, not science fiction writers. And, perhaps, everything was exactly as it is said in the annals.

A few years later, in 1589, the Englishman J. Garsay, while in Russia, saw on the shore rivers of the dead crocodile. From the point of view of official science, in Eastern Europe crocodiles were not supposed to live. But we are talking about the sixteenth century. It can be assumed that at that time these reptiles were found in Russian reservoirs. In the future, they could die both for natural reasons and as a result of aggression by people. Now it is no longer possible to find out whether those "crocodiles" were prehistoric lizards.

In Scotland, there is one fairly deep lake - Loch Morar. According to eyewitnesses, a creature unknown to science is found in this lake. In the 1970s, scientists conducted special studies on this lake, after which they stated that they had personally seen a large animal with a snake-like head. The size of a strange creature exceeded 13 meters. One of the researchers, Professor G. Vakhrushev, is convinced that the mysterious creatures that are talked about so much are actually lake plesiosaurs, today they may well live in lakes that originated from freshwater reservoirs of the Mesozoic era.

Unknown monsters can exist not only in water, but also on land. It is very interesting that the Irish mysterious beasts are similar in appearance to the mythological creatures "kelpies", about which there are many legends in Western Scotland. Ireland and Scotland are very close, so there is nothing surprising in the fact that the legends and myths of these countries are similar.

Meanwhile, there is information about the mysterious creatures that were observed in Russia. For example, they say that “relatives” of Nessie live in the lakes of Yakutia, namely prehistoric animals that should have disappeared from the face of the earth a long time ago.

So, in the middle of the 20th century, some people were lucky enough to see a strange creature that, according to the description, is very similar to a plesiosaur. One of the eyewitnesses (who also managed to sketch a hitherto unseen beast) was an employee of the biological detachment of the Yakut branch of the USSR Academy of Sciences. The fish lizard was also seen by geologists who worked in Yakutia.

It is curious that the Yakuts have long been sure that monsters live in their lakes, feeding on fish and even birds that settle on the banks of reservoirs. The monsters did not disdain people who went to the lakes to go fishing. Of course, local legends did not at all claim to be "scientific". People only wanted to warn each other about the terrible danger and in no case were they chasing a sensation.

Quite interesting stories. Aristotle and Euripides wrote about them. There is a legend that in the VIII century BC. e. King Sargon II saw a huge sea serpent off the coast of Cyprus. An image of this creature was found during archaeological excavations in Assyria on the walls of the Korsadad palace.

Modern scientists do not deny the possibility that prehistoric animals may survive today. Some stories of witnesses who personally saw strange creatures, leads the well-known popularizer of science V. Mezentsev in one of his books.

1734 - the Danish missionary P. Egende sailed on a ship along the coast of Greenland, and this is what he entered in the logbook: “We saw a terrible animal, unlike anything we had seen before. It raised its head so high above the waves that it seemed to rise above the tops of our ship. The monster breathed weaker than the whale; his head was narrower than his body, which seemed short and wrinkled. The animal moved with the help of huge fins located under its belly. After a while we saw his tail. The total length of the monster exceeded the length of our ship."

1848 - the captain of the English warship "Dedalus" wrote in the logbook: "When our attention was attracted by an object that appeared on the surface of the sea, we decided that it was a huge snake. We did not notice any limbs that served the animal for movement in the water, and no signs of horizontal movement. It quickly passed at such a close distance that it could be seen with the naked eye. It was moving at a speed of 12-15 miles per hour ...

Behind the head, the body diameter of the animal was 40–50 centimeters. During the 20 minutes of observation, the snake's head was always above the surface of the water. It was brown above and light yellow below. The animal did not have fins, but on its back it had something like a mane or a bunch of seaweed.

That description doesn't look particularly mysterious. There is nothing mystical in it. But science has not described such a creature. Rather, sea snakes themselves are well known. They live in tropical seas are dangerous to humans because they are very poisonous. But sea snakes are small, the largest individuals are no more than 2 meters. Eyewitnesses report real giants, which, according to descriptions, are similar to prehistoric animals.

Mezentsev cites an extract from the logbook of the ship Osborne for 1877: “The movement of the flat fins of the animal was like that of a turtle, and it looked like a huge seal ... The ship was at the latitude of the island of Sicily, and this is the only observation made in the Mediterranean Sea. Some believed that this animal was an ichthyosaur, others were inclined to see a giant tortoise in it.

1904 - The French Academy of Sciences drew attention to the following message, which was discussed at a special scientific meeting: “In the afternoon of February 25, 1904, heading for the exit from the bay, the Deside met a mysterious animal at the height of the Nua cliffs ... I saw all parts of the animal , successively immersed in water with vertical wave-like movements. It looked like a flattened snake and, according to my estimate, reached a length of up to 30 meters with a maximum thickness of 4-5 meters.

XX century - the Belgian scientist B. Euvelmans was engaged in the study of sea monsters, which, according to the description, are similar to prehistoric animals.

He is sure that eyewitness accounts are not fiction and that such creatures actually live in sea ​​depths. The scientist wrote: “It seems to me that the legend of the sea serpent originated because people had to meet various (it is not yet known which) very large snake-shaped animals belonging to different classes: fish, reptiles, mammals.

July 30, 1915 - off the coast of Ireland, the British steamer Iberion was blown up by the German submarine I-28. The captain of a German submarine noticed that after the explosion of the steamer, a huge animal surfaced on the surface of the water. The length of its body was about 20 meters, it looked like a crocodile with four flippers instead of paws. After about a quarter of a minute, the monster disappeared under the water.

1932 - An earthquake hits the Newfoundland area. Many bodies washed up on the shore marine life. Among them was the sea serpent, a huge creature with a pointed head.

1947 - fisherman D. Zegers saw an unknown creature near Vancouver Island off the western coast of North America. He described this meeting as follows: “Suddenly I felt very strange. A shiver ran down my spine and I felt like someone was watching me. I looked around. To the left, about 45 meters from the boat, the head and neck were raised above the water. more than a meter, two pitch black eyes staring intently. They stood out on the head like two rolls. I have never seen anything like it before.

The head was 40 centimeters in diameter. Looking at me, the animal turned away, and I saw its back. She had something like a dark brown mane, which consisted of tufts of warts rather than hair.

In the same year, 1947, in North Carolina, near Cape Lookout, the crew of a Greek ship saw an amazing creature with a cylindrical body of dark brown color and a snake head. The creature was wounded, the water around it stained with blood. And in the late 40s, a skeleton was discovered off the western coast of North America. Scientists have decided that this skeleton belongs to a sea serpent. The length of the creature's spine was 12 meters.

1959 - Durban fishermen saw a whole herd of sea monsters. There were at least 20 of them, the length of each creature seemed to be about 10 meters.

1963 - also seen off the coast of Iceland. A year later, in Massachusetts Bay, the crew of a fishing boat noticed sea ​​serpent 15 meters long. We were able to take a few pictures soon after. sea ​​monster. Its length, according to the description of eyewitnesses, was about 25 meters. The head of the snake was massive and round, the width and length of the head was more than two meters. The animal had uneven skin, without scales. Body color is black with brown rings. But some of the scientists decided that the pictures were either a hoax, or captured, for example, a giant conger eel. The scientists' skepticism is understandable. But it is pointless to dismiss the numerous evidence of the existence of sea monsters.

1977 - in the area of ​​\u200b\u200bNew Zealand, the Japanese trawler "Tsuyomaru" lifted the corpse of an unknown creature from a great depth (about 300 meters). The animal had a tail up to 2 m long, a small head, a long neck, the total length of its body was 13 m, and it weighed about 2 tons. Scientists did not fully examine the corpse of the sea monster, because it was already decomposing and the crew did not dare to take the rotting carcass on board. He was thrown into the sea, having previously photographed and made appropriate entries in the ship's log. One piece of the fin was left and put in the refrigerator. Scientists are interested in the find.

Some Japanese experts said that the creature was a plesiosaur, others thought that it was the corpse of a huge shark or a small whale. The situation was further complicated by the fact that the carcass was semi-decomposed, so identifying it was not an easy task. But after carefully studying the fin, scientists found a protein in it that whales do not have. Sharks have such a protein, and it was also once in the tissues of prehistoric animals, which included plesiosaurs. In favor of the belonging of the body to a prehistoric lizard, the fact that its head did not look like a shark (painfully, it was small) also speaks. But the mystery was never solved.

1998 - a sea monster was seen in the sea off the coast of British Columbia with long neck th. Canadian newspapers wrote about it. The riddle has never been solved. In Zambia, locals are sure that a huge monster lives in one of the reservoirs, which feeds on large animals, in particular hippos. In the jungles of the Congo, according to the evidence, there is also a monster that looks like a dinosaur.

In the 1980s, Professor R. Makkel of the University of Chicago, who had been studying the Loch Ness monster for a long time, specially went to this country. He tried to learn more about the animal that is found in the Congo. The professor collected a lot of eyewitness accounts, their descriptions of the animal coincided. In length, it reached 12 meters, had a huge tail, a long neck. The creature's skin was gray-brown, its footprints looked like those of an elephant, but differed by the presence of claws. The description of the creature perfectly matches the characteristics of a dinosaur.

The professor suggested that the dinosaur could well live in the local jungle, especially since the climate has not changed there over the past few tens of millions of years. Soon, Makell organized another expedition into the jungles of the Congo. He was primarily interested in the little-explored region of Lake Tele.

The lake is located among impenetrable forests. It has long attracted the attention of scientists. So, in 1913, a German expedition visited there. The researchers managed to find traces of an unknown creature in the lake. But the war began, and the expedition was curtailed.

McKel was also unlucky. His second expedition was hampered by a conflict with the locals. A few years later, in 1983, one of the participants in this expedition, a graduate of the University of Havana M. Anyanya, decided to go in search again. He was from the Congo, so he knew local beliefs well. The researcher interviewed local residents and recorded a variety of stories about the monster.

Once he himself saw the head of a dinosaur on a long neck in Lake Tele. The animal noticed people and began to dive under the water. Using binoculars, the researcher was able to examine the creature in sufficient detail and concluded that it was a prehistoric animal. Photograph of the monster failed.

There is evidence that such creatures live in Zambia and Mozambique. Dinosaurs might well have survived African continent, where such a favorable climate for reptiles. There is a lot of unexplored territory here and in our time.

In prehistoric times, animals that we can rightfully call "monsters" lived everywhere - in the depths of the sea and on land. They swam, they ran, they flew. By the way, our contemporaries also saw such flying monsters. True, flying prehistoric lizards were much less common than sea ​​monsters. This is quite understandable. We humans have been very poorly able to explore the underwater world, especially the deep one. But with land, the situation is different.

Here mankind has mastered vast territories. Nevertheless, winged monsters remained in some places. Perhaps they are pterodactyls?

1932 - the famous American zoologist A. Sanderson was on an expedition to Cameroon. Once he saw a small dragon flying through the air (at least the creature looked like a dragon). The scientist carefully examined it and could swear that the "dragon" does not apply to known to science types. After some time, Sanderson saw the dragon again. The lizard flew so fast that it knocked down one of the members of the expedition, made several circles, and then flew away.

The expedition had a local guide. He was very excited at the sight of the dragon and declared that the monster was a harbinger of death and the one who saw it should die soon. But Sanderson was not so pessimistic. He decided that the flying creature was a prehistoric pterodactyl.

This is not the only "ancient" pangolin that supposedly lives in Africa. There is a belief that on the border of Zaire and Angola there is a huge - up to two meters in length - flying lizard with sharp teeth. It is also believed that seeing her is a bad omen.

In the 1970s, in the United States, in the state of South Carolina, incredible monsters were repeatedly seen in the swamps. They were covered with green scales, their growth reached 2 meters. The creatures moved on their hind legs. According to the description, they also resembled prehistoric animals.

1976, June - a 16-year-old teenager saw a lizard that ran across the field towards him. The boy barely escaped in the car. Then the police received several more reports about this mysterious animal. But it was not possible to catch him, although traces were found.

Of course, such messages can be perceived as a kind of hoax. But we must remember that scientists to this day have not refuted the existence of prehistoric animals. In fact, the mystery modern dinosaurs' has not been solved yet. And it may well be that in the future we will learn a lot of new and interesting things about this.

O. Larina