The dire wolf is still extinct.

[cab67]

45. plants are a whole 'nother level of complex.

Last edited Wed Apr 9, 2025, 09:30 AM - Edit history (1)

I like to say crocodiles hybridize with gay abandon, but they're celibate puritans compared with plants. Their evolutionary relationships are more like a woven rug than a tree.

True story - someone once showed me a crocodile skull with little horn-like projections behind the eyes. In modern crocodiles, this typically only happens in Cuban and Siamese crocodiles. Cuban crocodiles are New World crocodiles, so they also have a rounded hump in the middle of the snout. Siamese crocodiles are Indopacific forms with slender crests (ridges) extending forward from right in front of each eye.

This one had both the hump and the crests.

Turns out, when Vietnam was trying to get its economy going after the war, they wanted to expand their crocodile farming operations for the exotic leather industry. The Siamese and saltwater crocodiles native to Vietnam weren't doing so well, so they couldn't get many into captivity. They thus went to the only other communist country with a native population of crocodiles for extra breeding stock.

Siamese and Cuban crocodiles haven't shared a common ancestor for 10 to 15 million years, and yet they can interbreed. And the offspring are fertile.

And their skulls annoy the f-word out of me.