3 Mysterious Skeleton Discovered by Researchers

Archaeological discoveries are important for studying the history of the past. But sometimes there are some strange discoveries that make experts wonder, because they are very strange and unusual.

Here are 3 mysterious skeleton discovered by researchers:

1. Mysterious Skeleton of Horned Kangaroo Discovered in Australia

John Long of the Western Australian Museum at Perth and his colleagues first excavated the newly found caves in the Nullarbor Plain, Australia in 2002. They found an astonishing collection of megafauna fossils, including partial skull fragments from a "Horned Kangaroo" and the first complete skeletons of the giant marsupial lion thylacoleo.

Image credit: New Scientist

According to the New Scientist, dating work suggests that the fossils are between 200,000 and 500,000 years old. Back then, the Nullarbor Plain, which stretches 750 kilometers across Australia's southwest coast, would have been wetter than it is today.

A year later, their excavations unearthed two kangaroo skulls with entire horns and their partial skeletons, as well as two other thylacoleo skeletons and fossils of three species that the team believe to be new to science.

John Long said that "The kangaroo is really weird. It is unlike any other kangaroo or living fossil yet discovered. The bony projections just above the eyes protrude laterally and it has a strange bulbous snout."

The researchers suspect that the bony horn-like protrusions might have served to guard the kangaroo’s eyes.

2. Mysterious Tetrapod Skeleton Discovered in Utah

A mysterious Tetrapod skeleton dating around 300 million years ago that was found in Utah, Lost Canyon within the Canyonlands National Park may be an entirely new species, said researchers. The creature is a vertebrate with four-limb and could possibly be an ancient ancestor of mammals or reptiles.

Image credit: CNN

According to CNN, the fossil was first discovered in October 2020 by a park ranger, however, it was collected and further researched until October 2021 by several scientists and paleontologists from the University of Southern California, the Petrified Forest, and the Natural History Museum of Utah. The skeleton was in the same position it would have been when the creature died hundreds of millions of years ago.

It is not yet clear what type of creature it was, but experts believe it could be an amniote (an egg-laying vertebrate) that lived on land. This find could be a whole new species of early amniotes.

Amniotes are a clade of tetrapod vertebrates that comprise sauropsids (including reptiles and birds) and synapsids (including mammals).

3. Dinosaur Fossil with Strange and Unusual Spikes Discovered in Morocco

In 2019, researchers at the London museum purchased a strange fossil from a collector for an undisclosed price. The collector, who is also a fossil hunter, said he found it from a site in the Middle Atlas Mountains in Morocco.

According to The Guardian, this heavily armored animal remains dates to the middle Jurassic era (about 168 million years ago) are particularly remarkable because it's the first dinosaur fossil which have defensive spikes fused to the skeleton, a feature researchers say is unprecedented in the animal kingdom.

Image credit: The Guardian

Dr Susannah Maidment, paleontologist at the Natural History Museum in London, said, it's very strange and unusual. Usually when we see Stegosaurs and Ankylosaurs's armor, the dermal armor is embedded in the skin, not attached to the skeleton. However, this one is fused to the ribs.

The discovery was so unusual that scientists wondered whether the fossil might be a fake, but further inspection using a CT scanner found no signs that it had been tampered with.

The microscopic analysis of thin sections of the fossil revealed distinctive patterns of fibres unique to ankylosaurs. It is also the first Ankylosaur fossil to be found in Africa.