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Dino News Episode 15 Podcast Version Meet Michigan's most bizarre prehistoric creatures
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Jan 15
2022
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Meet Michigan's most bizarre prehistoric creatures
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Updated: May. 20, 2019, 12:25 p.m. | Published: Aug. 13, 2017, 11:57 a.m.
*By* *John Serba | jserba@mlive.com* ( http://www.mlive.com/staff/jserba/pos... )
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Courtesy photo | LadyofHats [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
*By John Serba | jserba@mlive.com*
Have you ever watched a chipmunk skitter across your path, and wondered what used to live in your yard 15,000 years ago? A million years ago? Or 400 million years ago, for that matter?
Wonder no more. Michigan is home to a reasonably rich fossil record ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Paleont... ) , as long as you're not a fan of dinosaurs. (More on that in a minute.) Paleontologists have unearthed evidence of some amazing creatures - most of them long-extinct - in our state, from strange, tiny, ocean-dwelling things (coral) to monster fish (Dunkleosteus) to Ice Age megafauna (mammoths and mastodons). Here's a collection of some of the biggest, strangest and most fascinating creatures ever to leave their bones embedded in the earth or preserved in the rock here in Michigan.
via GIPHY ( https://giphy.com/gifs/dinosaur-land-... )
*First things first: No dinosaur bones*
While they almost certainly roamed on Michigan territory, nobody has ever turned up a single dinosaur bone in the state. From the Permian period (299-252 million years ago) to the end of the Neogene (23-2.6 million years ago), erosion was occurring and no sediments were deposited locally, leaving behind no rocks or fossils ( http://www.michigan.gov/documents/deq... ). This time period encompasses the entirety of dinosaurs' existence on the planet.
Sucks to be us, sort of, although Michigan’s fossil record includes fascinating primitive creatures and early fishes from the Devonian period (419 to 359 million years ago), which gave us our official state rock, and large mammals from the Pleistocene epoch (2.6 million-11,700 years ago), which gave us our state fossil.
MLive file photo | Cory Morse
*Coral*
The Michigan-famous Petoskey stone, our official state rock ( http://www.michigan.gov/documents/deq... ) , is fossilized rugose coral from the Devonian, when much of North America was covered with a shallow ocean. Glacial movement during the ice age ground the edges off the stones and deposited them primarily in northwestern Michigan, where rock hunters find them in the water, polish them to bring out the six-sided, honeycomb-patterned coral fossils and display them on knickknack shelves - as long as they're less than 25 lbs. and therefore not violating an obscure state ordinance, of course ( http://www.mlive.com/news/grand-rapid... ). (Tip: if you want to get away with hauling in a giant Petoskey stone, don't post a photo of it on Facebook.) The rugose coral, which fed on small organisms by capturing them with tentacles, has been extinct for 250 million years.
Blastoid courtesy photo | Wilson44691 (Own work) [CC0], via Wikimedia Commons
*Crinoids, blastoids, bryozoa*
These Devonian invertebrates don't get the glory that coral does, because they haven't been declared the official Michigan state rock. Crinoids ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Crinoid ) get the rawest deal, because their fossils can be quite beautiful ( https://www.google.com/search?bih=638... ) ; these echinoderms could grow to several feet tall, resembled fans and ferns, and still exist in oceans today. Blastoids are extinct echinoderms related to crinoids; they're less common, and differentiated by a star-shaped head. Bryozoa could be a few millimeters or several feet tall, and are commonly known as "moss animals." All three were stationary, attaching themselves to the ocean floor, rocks or animal shells or skeletons, and filtered their food from the water.
Courtesy photo | LadyofHats [Public domain], via Wikimedia Commons
*Dunkleosteus*
This terrifying armor-plated fish, or placoderm ( https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Placodermi ) , swam over an ocean-covered Michigan during the Devonian period, apparently eating whatever the heck it wanted. It grew as large as 20 ft. long and weighed up to a ton - about the size of a great white shark - and is characterized as a hypercarnivorous apex predator, able to use its beaklike mouth to chomp through other armored fish, arthropods and mollusks.
With no dinosaurs in our state’s fossil record, Dunkleosteus is easily the scariest top-of-the-food-chain beast e
