My absolute gratitude to Happy Hen Toys for generously sending this little figure of a cute fish for me to review here. You can pick up this figure, and many others like it from there as well.
While I adore a number of prehistoric fish (like that silly Sacabambaspis that became a meme a few years ago), there is but one that has captivated me more then any other since my childhood.
Pterygotus was a member of the order Eurypterida, often known as sea scorpions. More than a dozen species have been described, with the very largest, P. grandidentatus, being around 1.75 metres long and the smallest, P. kopaninensis, only growing to around 50 cm long.
The genus Jaekelopterus contains two species from the Early Devonian; fossils of J. rhenaniae were originally discovered in the Rhineland of Western Germany while those of J. howellii were originally discovered in Wyoming, USA. Jaekelopterus rhenaniae is not only the largest eurypterid, it is the largest known arthropod…EVER!
Next to the giant shark Megalodon, the armored Devonian placoderm Dunkleosteus is probably the most famous prehistoric fish, featuring frequently in publications and other media. Naturally, many toy and model companies have given the great fish a go at least once.
350 million years before the advent of humans, reindeer, or consumerism, our distant gnathostome forebears celebrated Fishmas. Fishmas originated when Santa Claus turned the wrong dial on the time machine he uses to travel to every house in the same night, landing him in the Devonian and the gaping maw of a Dunkleosteus.
If somebody has heard of just one Paleozoic fish, it’s probably Dunkleosteus, designated yesterday as Ohio’s official state fossil fish! Toy companies have made more than a dozen different versions over the years, and several higher-end models exist as well.
Kaiyodo has to be one of the best prehistoric animal lines out there. At a small size, they gave us a wide spread of species from across earth history in glorious detail and beautiful paint schemes. Today’s review shows just this: Pterygotus, a Silurian Sea Scorpion, one of the largest arthropods ever known, reaching a body length of 5.7 ft.
Ancient fish, with the exception of sharks, are a rarity in toy lines. Perhaps most believe they are all small and aren’t noteworthy. This is far from the case, as many ancient fish were large and bizarre enough to contend with dinosaurs. Fortunately, our own Jetoar has been able to prove they are worth making with figures like this: Hyneria, a Devonian Sarcopterygian from Pennsylvania, a 12 ft fish that would have terrorised all creatures smaller than it.
For those interested in paleontology and evolution beyond dinosaurs the name Tiktaalik should be a familiar one. Discovered on Ellesmere Island, Canada, and formally described in 2006, Tiktaalik is significant in broadening our understanding of how sarcopterygian fishes gave rise to land dwelling vertebrates.
About 300 kilometers from Sydney lies the town of Canowindra, New South Wales. In the 1950s a road worker in Canowindra chanced upon some fossils, and in the 1990s paleontologists started working on the site in earnest, eventually revealing one of the world’s finest assemblages of freshwater animals from the Late Devonian.
Today I want you to introduce you to one of those creatures everybody knows, but knows almost nothing about, a jellyfish. Jellyfish are a very very old group of animals, they date back to the famous Ediacarian, more than 600 mya.
The murky pond lays silently in the riparian forest of the Late Devonian, 365 mya. Dragonfly like insects soar and hunt for smaller airborne relatives, their quiet buzzing is the only sound disturbing the lethargic scene. A pair of those hunters engages is their distinct mating ritual, the “heart”.
