"Who cares about these fossils except paleontologists?", a reader who is not easily surprised might think. But don't rush. Fossils are not just "boring rocks", they are also a kind of cast of the primeval world. And sometimes they contain very interesting creatures, which we will tell you about and show you in photographs in this article about the top 10 most amazing finds in fossils.
10. Dragon hunts dinosaur
Dinosaurs once ruled the Earth. Yet they had to share the planet with creatures that would have taken a bite out of those terrifying lizards, big or small, if they had the chance.
Here's the first specimen in our ranking of amazing fossils, showing how a snake from the genus Sanajeh indicus (which lived about 67 million years ago) decided to take a gastronomic tour of a dinosaur nest.
The snake was 3.5 metres long and was found near a clutch of sauropod dinosaur eggs. Other fossils found nearby show other Sanajeh indicus snakes coiled around other eggs, so it appears that baby dinosaurs were their favourite treat.
9. The parasite escapes from its dying host
Parasites are amazing, if very unpleasant, creatures. Instead of looking for food, they are perfectly adapted to stealing nutrients from other creatures. Sometimes they move inside their hosts to feast on something especially tasty or to be safe.
When a parasitic nematode senses that its host is dying, it often tries to crawl out of it. This amber has such an event forever imprinted. When the little cicada found itself in thick tree sap, the worm, which had filled almost the entire cavity of its body, began its way out. Unfortunately for the parasite, it could not escape from the sap, and neither could its host. Both died 35 million years ago.
8. Turtles during mating season
For two unfortunate turtles, the moment of mating was more than just a "little death". It seems that this couple loved extreme sports, otherwise how to explain the fact that they decided to mate while swimming in a volcanic lake, or maybe they accidentally fell in there?
Before research determined the sex of these turtles, some scientists speculated that the turtles had died in some kind of strange fight.
7. Dinosaur fight
Velociraptors weren't exactly the menace they posed in Jurassic Park. For one thing, they were small (up to 1.5 m long, 40-70 cm tall), so it's unlikely they would have hunted humans, at least not alone. But the long sickle-shaped claw on their foot made them dangerous opponents for creatures that velociraptors could handle.
For one Protoceratops that lived about 74 million years ago in ancient Mongolia, an encounter with a Velociraptor was fatal.
The Velociraptor's claw sank into the victim's throat, which would likely have been a "fatality." But the Protoceratops did not remain in debt, and it appears to have bitten its attacker on the paw with such force that it broke the Velociraptor's bones.
Scientists believe that while these dinosaurs were fighting for their lives, a large land mass (presumably a sand dune) suddenly collapsed on them.
6. Common burrow
The first animal discovered inside the 250-million-year-old burrow was a proto-mammal called Thrinaxodon. This animal is believed to have been the burrow's owner. But right next to it was an amphibian called Brumistega.
Since Brumistega is exactly the kind of animal that the predatory Thrinaxodon would hunt, the two were unlikely to have been bunkmates. The key to understanding why they shared a burrow was the injuries on the amphibian. Two bite marks on the top of its head showed that it had been attacked, but the bite marks were not consistent with Thrinaxodon.
The researchers believe that Thrinaxodon was likely asleep or in a state of torpor when the injured Brumistega crawled into its burrow. Unfortunately, both denizens of the burrow were caught in the muddy mud when a flash flood buried them alive.
5. The hunter became the prey
As the pterosaur caught the small fish, a second, much larger fish flew out of the water and grabbed the pterosaur itself. An amazing incident that ended fatally for all involved.
4. Traces in Laetoli
The discovery of footprints at Laetoli, Tanzania in 1978 provided compelling evidence that our distant ancestors walked on two legs at least 3.7 million years ago.
These tracks were most likely made by Australopithecus afarensis, which walked through a layer of ash from a recent volcanic eruption. Light African rains likely dampened the ash, turning it into clay and preserving it perfectly for science.
3. Prehistoric Pompeii
Compared to many of the other entries on this list of the world's most unusual fossils, this one is still a baby, but what it lacks in age, it makes up for in how incredible it is.
About 12 million years ago, a volcanic eruption killed more than 200 animals, including rhinoceroses, early horses, long-necked camels and cranes. Their perfectly preserved and fully articulated skeletons are still being unearthed 40 years after they were first discovered.
2. A female ichthyosaur gives birth on land
The moment of birth can be quite dangerous, and there are many fossils of unfortunate mothers who died during childbirth. Sometimes these fossils can tell a lot about the life of these creatures from birth to death.
For example, many fossils have been found of ichthyosaur mothers and their young just after birth. Most of these show the young emerging from the mother tail-first, suggesting they were born in the sea. However, one of the first ichthyosaurs, which lived 250 million years ago, was found giving birth to young that hatched head-first.
Since head birth is only found in land animals, this suggests that the first ichthyosaurs crawled onto land to give birth to their offspring. Later, ichthyosaurs evolved into creatures that lived exclusively in water.
1. Flea with plague bacteria
One of the strangest fossils is about 20 million years old. One of the world's leading amber researchers, American paleoentomologist George Poinar Jr., and his colleagues from Oregon State University, discovered it in amber from the Dominican Republic.
Dominican amber is one of the most important types of amber, often nearly transparent and obtained from the resin of the extinct tree Hymenaea protera. Much of the Dominican amber preserves the remains of neotropical forests that existed in the region 25 to 20 million years ago.
The amber had already been found to contain numerous insects, so it was not a big surprise to find a flea in it as well. What surprised the researchers was the discovery of the deadly plague bacterium in the creature’s body. Poinar claimed that the microbe was probably the ancestor of the modern plague bacillus, or Yersinia pestis. He went on to say that several strains of the disease had evolved and died out over time, and as interesting as the new find was, its true significance remained a mystery at the time.
However, he did mention that the bacteria was present in a dried drop of blood in the flea's proboscis, suggesting that the plague was transmitted in the same way as the worst pandemics in world history.
The find dates back to the early Miocene, when mammal diversity began to explode. At the time, the Dominican Republic was probably covered in dense tropical forests, and this plague flea had the misfortune of getting stuck in fresh resin.
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