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Pterodaustro
The lower jaw of Pterodaustro carried hundreds of slender teeth that formed a comb. Those teeth suggest a flying reptile that strained small food from water. A closer look at fossil tooth roots revealed an unusual continuous groove where the tightly packed teeth grew.
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Therizinosaurus
The hands of Therizinosaurus carried extremely long claws, especially striking beside the smaller claws of most other dinosaurs. Isolated claws and arm bones preserve that shape directly. They tell us more securely what its hands looked like than exactly what it did with them.
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Ankylosaurus
The tail of Ankylosaurus ended in a bony club. Its handle was made from tightly braced vertebrae, and the knob at the end was built from enlarged bones in the skin. That combination gives the tail a very different outline from that of a long-necked or running dinosaur.
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Basilosaurus
Basilosaurus isis had a long, fully aquatic body and tiny hind limbs. A fossil pelvis and small foot bones show how much of a leg remained after its ancestors took to the water. Those feet were too small to carry the whale on land.
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Uintatherium
Uintatherium puts the eye-catching parts of a skull in odd places. Several pairs of bony knobs rise from the top, and the upper canines project downward. A mounted skull makes the contrast between the stubby projections and long teeth easy to see.
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Chalicotherium
Chalicotherium was related to hoofed animals such as horses and rhinos, but its digits ended in claws. The outer claw material is rarely preserved. The shape of the fossil bone from the tip of a digit is the clue that tells paleontologists what covered it.
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Kelenken
Kelenken was a flightless bird with a long, deep skull that ended in a hooked beak. The skull gives this South American terror bird an unmistakable profile. The display mount shows the scale of the head, but the original description relied on a near-complete skull and only a few other bones.
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Stupendemys
Some shells of Stupendemys preserve a horn projecting from either side near the front. Other specimens lack the horns, and the researchers suggest the difference may mark males and females. The shell itself makes that possibility visible in a way a loose bone never could.
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Platybelodon
Two flattened lower tusks formed a broad edge on the jaw of Platybelodon, a relative of elephants. It looks like a shovel, but microscopic wear on the tusks is consistent with cutting tough vegetation. The shape is only part of the evidence for how it ate.
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Thylacosmilus
Thylacosmilus had curved upper canines that sat beside deep outgrowths of the lower jaw. Those bony flanges help identify its skull at a glance. The teeth recall saber-toothed cats, but their shape and the rest of the skull have led researchers to question whether they worked the same way.
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Odobenocetops
Odobenocetops was a toothed whale with tusks. The skull and tusks look startlingly like a walrus’s, and the researchers who described it proposed that it fed in a similar way. The fossil offers a case of two very different mammals arriving at a similar face.
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Megatherium
This giant ground sloth had a stout skeleton and long claws. A standing mount shows how much of its bulk sat over its hind limbs. Its proportions help explain how a sloth that lived on the ground could reach branches far above its head.
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Doedicurus
Doedicurus looked like a giant armadillo with a heavy tail club. The bones at its tail end made a rigid striking surface, even if the exact appearance of its outer covering is harder to recover. The armor and club give the skeleton most of its distinctive outline.
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Thylacoleo
The so-called marsupial lion had a pair of enormous blade-shaped teeth that were premolars. It also had a large claw on the inner digit of each hand. Put the hands next to the skull and the outline of this very different kind of mammal hunter emerges.
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Irish elk
The Irish elk carried broad, branching antlers that could span more than ten feet. The skull makes the width clear in a way an isolated antler cannot. Its modern relatives are deer, and the proportions make even a familiar deer silhouette look strange.
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Macrauchenia
Macrauchenia carried its nasal opening high on the skull. That’s why artists have drawn it with a short trunk or a flexible nose. The skull preserves the position of the opening, but the soft parts that would settle its profile are still missing.
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Smilodon
The upper canines of Smilodon extended well below the upper jaw. The skull could open exceptionally wide, clearing the tips of those teeth. A fossil jaw from La Brea even preserves a baby saber beside its emerging adult replacement.
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