WEBVTT - The Hogs of Hell, Part 2 0:00:00.560 --> 0:00:04.519 And Arthur went as far as esquier Orvo in Ireland, 0:00:04.680 --> 0:00:07.560 to the place where the boar Troweth was with his 0:00:07.680 --> 0:00:10.960 seven young pigs, and the dogs were let loose upon 0:00:11.080 --> 0:00:14.840 him from all sides. That day until evening the Irish 0:00:14.840 --> 0:00:18.279 fought with him. Nevertheless, he laid waste the fifth part 0:00:18.360 --> 0:00:21.680 of Ireland. And on the day following the household of 0:00:21.760 --> 0:00:24.919 Arthur fought with him, and they were worsted by him 0:00:25.239 --> 0:00:28.920 and got no advantage. And the third day Arthur himself 0:00:29.040 --> 0:00:31.560 encountered him, and he fought with him nine nights and 0:00:31.680 --> 0:00:35.040 nine days, without so much as killing even one little pig. 0:00:35.800 --> 0:00:39.400 The warriors inquired of Arthur what was the origin of 0:00:39.400 --> 0:00:42.040 that swine, and he told them that he was once 0:00:42.080 --> 0:00:45.400 a king, and that God had transformed him into a 0:00:45.479 --> 0:00:50.720 swine for his sins. 0:00:51.159 --> 0:00:54.920 Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:01:00.800 --> 0:01:03.040 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:01:03.080 --> 0:01:03.680 is Robert. 0:01:03.520 --> 0:01:06.440 Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with 0:01:06.520 --> 0:01:10.920 part two in our Halloween season series called Hogs of Hell. 0:01:11.440 --> 0:01:11.560 Now. 0:01:11.600 --> 0:01:15.760 In the previous episode, we focused mostly on mythology and fiction, 0:01:16.280 --> 0:01:21.200 looking at a glorious assortment of monster pigs, bielsa, bores, 0:01:21.560 --> 0:01:25.840 and also a few rather benevolent divine suiform beings of 0:01:26.000 --> 0:01:29.360 various types. So in terms of specific examples, we talked 0:01:29.400 --> 0:01:33.679 about everything from the vicious, shaggy, froth jawed Aromanthian boar 0:01:33.880 --> 0:01:37.000 which was captured by Hercules in Greek myth, to the 0:01:37.040 --> 0:01:41.280 noble and heroic pig featured incarnation of the Hindu god Vishnu, 0:01:41.640 --> 0:01:44.319 who retrieves the earth when it is rolled up and 0:01:44.360 --> 0:01:47.160 stolen away to the ocean depths by a great demon. 0:01:47.680 --> 0:01:50.160 And here we are again today to keep the monster 0:01:50.280 --> 0:01:52.040 pig parade on the March. 0:01:52.760 --> 0:01:55.160 And indeed, in the last episode we did talk a 0:01:55.160 --> 0:02:00.160 little bit about King Arthur battling various bores across the 0:02:00.680 --> 0:02:02.960 British Isle. So I wanted to at the top of 0:02:02.960 --> 0:02:06.000 this episode throwing just a little quote that gives you 0:02:06.040 --> 0:02:08.800 a taste of that, though it doesn't really reference all 0:02:08.880 --> 0:02:10.600 the gorings that also take place. 0:02:11.560 --> 0:02:15.680 Yeah, I like how it says the warriors were like, hey, Arthur, 0:02:15.840 --> 0:02:19.480 we've been fighting this pig and it's worsting us. I 0:02:19.480 --> 0:02:22.320 don't know if it was like different than being bested 0:02:22.320 --> 0:02:24.480 by a pig, to be worsted by a pig but 0:02:24.520 --> 0:02:27.040 it's besting all the nights and they're like, Arthur, where 0:02:27.040 --> 0:02:29.320 did this pig come from? And Arthur is like, well, 0:02:29.440 --> 0:02:31.160 this pig was once a king, but he was a 0:02:31.280 --> 0:02:32.800 bad king, not like me. 0:02:33.320 --> 0:02:35.360 I have to question his management style a little bit 0:02:35.480 --> 0:02:38.440 for not like fully briefing everyone on the nature of 0:02:38.480 --> 0:02:40.359 these boors. Was he just like, Hey, we're gonna go 0:02:40.400 --> 0:02:43.840 wage war against pigs for a few months here, And 0:02:43.840 --> 0:02:46.600 they were like, okay, sure, that sounds like a reasonable 0:02:46.600 --> 0:02:47.000 thing to do. 0:02:47.560 --> 0:02:48.160 Yeah, why not? 0:02:48.880 --> 0:02:51.720 Anyway, I wanted to kick things off today by turning 0:02:51.800 --> 0:02:56.360 to the world of palaeontology, because it so happens. You 0:02:56.440 --> 0:02:59.880 do not have to go into mythology and fiction to 0:03:00.200 --> 0:03:04.160 meet some blood curdling monster pigs, or, perhaps, to be 0:03:04.200 --> 0:03:08.880 more accurate, maybe not pigs, but blood curdling monster hoofed 0:03:09.000 --> 0:03:12.760 mammals with some pig like features. Well hash out what's 0:03:12.840 --> 0:03:15.160 really a pig and what's not as we go along. 0:03:15.520 --> 0:03:18.320 But the point is, if you go back maybe twenty 0:03:18.440 --> 0:03:22.079 thirty million years into the fossil record, you will encounter 0:03:22.240 --> 0:03:25.200 a branch of the mammal family tree that has been 0:03:25.280 --> 0:03:30.640 affectionately nicknamed the hell pigs, and perhaps less tastefully the 0:03:30.800 --> 0:03:34.480 terminator pigs. That's got to be a subsequent nickname there. 0:03:34.400 --> 0:03:37.720 Right, Yeah, yeah, I don't know how clinical that is. 0:03:38.320 --> 0:03:41.600 Now, hell pigs is just a cute name that has 0:03:41.680 --> 0:03:45.880 been used in popular media. I found earlier sources from 0:03:45.920 --> 0:03:48.600 the nineteen twenties which refer to the same class of 0:03:48.600 --> 0:03:54.000 animals by calling them giant pigs. In scientific nomenclature, these 0:03:54.080 --> 0:03:57.600 creatures we're going to be talking about are called antilodonts 0:03:58.200 --> 0:04:04.840 e ntel od intilodonts. They belong to the family Intilodontidy, 0:04:05.440 --> 0:04:09.400 which is now completely extinct. The family name comes from 0:04:09.440 --> 0:04:14.560 the Greek intellus, meaning complete or perfect, and odon, meaning tooth, 0:04:14.680 --> 0:04:18.440 so the antilidont is the beast of the perfect tooth, 0:04:18.560 --> 0:04:22.600 or the beast of the complete tooth. The antilodont family 0:04:22.800 --> 0:04:27.359 is a member of the order Artiodactyla, which for much 0:04:27.400 --> 0:04:32.560 of scientific history were known as the even toed ungulates ungulates, 0:04:32.560 --> 0:04:36.720 meaning a hoofed animal even toad ungulates, referring to the 0:04:36.760 --> 0:04:40.000 fact that most branches of this order bear their weight 0:04:40.080 --> 0:04:44.560 primarily on two toes per foot. Now, despite the historical 0:04:44.600 --> 0:04:48.159 classification based on this feature, more recent research has shown 0:04:48.200 --> 0:04:50.279 that not all of the animals in this branch of 0:04:50.320 --> 0:04:54.440 mammalia are actually ungulates or hoofed animals as traditionally understood, 0:04:55.080 --> 0:04:59.600 so artiodactyls today consist of more well known ungulates like 0:04:59.720 --> 0:05:07.560 de bison, cattle, sheep, and goats, but also camels, pigs, giraffes, hippopotamuses, 0:05:07.920 --> 0:05:12.800 and maybe most surprisingly, whales and dolphins, because remember, whales 0:05:12.839 --> 0:05:16.120 evolved from animals that used to live entirely on land 0:05:16.520 --> 0:05:20.039 and millions of years ago made the gradual adaptive transition 0:05:20.520 --> 0:05:24.720 to more and more water based lifestyle and physiology over time, 0:05:25.040 --> 0:05:28.320 until eventually they were fully water dwelling creatures, having come 0:05:29.160 --> 0:05:32.479 began as fish, moved onto the land, become mammals, and 0:05:32.520 --> 0:05:35.919 then moved back into the water. Yeah, quite a journey 0:05:36.560 --> 0:05:40.080 in tilodonts. The so called hell pigs first show up 0:05:40.120 --> 0:05:42.960 in the fossil record sometime in the middle of the 0:05:43.040 --> 0:05:47.000 Eocene epoch, which began roughly fifty five million years ago, 0:05:47.080 --> 0:05:50.560 placing it about ten million years after the extinction of 0:05:50.600 --> 0:05:54.640 the non avian dinosaurs, and continued until about thirty four 0:05:54.720 --> 0:05:56.920 million years ago. I don't know if this has been 0:05:56.920 --> 0:06:00.440 superseded by any more recent fossil finds, but at least 0:06:00.480 --> 0:06:03.040 for a while, it was thought that antilodants first appeared 0:06:03.040 --> 0:06:06.000 in the area that is now Mongolia and then spread 0:06:06.040 --> 0:06:10.000 across the globe. First spread across much of Asia and 0:06:10.160 --> 0:06:14.520 then to North America and Europe as well. And numerous 0:06:14.640 --> 0:06:18.720 species of antilidants thrived during the Oligocene epic, and then 0:06:18.760 --> 0:06:21.760 they appeared to have died out in the Early Miocene 0:06:22.320 --> 0:06:26.760 between nineteen and sixteen million years ago. So one thing 0:06:26.800 --> 0:06:29.520 that's worth emphasizing is that we're not talking about one 0:06:29.680 --> 0:06:33.360 specific species of animal. We're talking about this family. So 0:06:33.400 --> 0:06:37.000 there were many different species of antilodonts. The largest were 0:06:37.080 --> 0:06:40.760 probably according to now I've come across different estimates here, 0:06:40.760 --> 0:06:44.599 but according to the estimate given by Encyclopedia Britannica, they 0:06:44.640 --> 0:06:48.839 could maybe get nine hundred kilograms. Britannica compares this to 0:06:48.880 --> 0:06:52.200 a Clydesdale horse, so you can picture giant fanged pigs 0:06:52.480 --> 0:06:57.080 pulling the Budweiser wagon. The largest known genus of antilidont 0:06:57.240 --> 0:07:03.800 is confusingly known by seven different names, primarily Dinohias d 0:07:04.320 --> 0:07:08.159 n O. H y Us, which means terrible pig or 0:07:08.240 --> 0:07:11.280 monstrous pig from the same formation that you get dinosaur, 0:07:11.440 --> 0:07:15.960 you know, terrible reptile, but then also is known as 0:07:16.200 --> 0:07:22.280 Deodon daeodn, which means hostile tooth. It took me a 0:07:22.320 --> 0:07:24.080 while to figure out what was going on here, but 0:07:24.120 --> 0:07:27.840 it seems that the type species in question here is 0:07:28.320 --> 0:07:34.400 known as either Dinohias Hollandi or Diodon shoshoneensis, And these 0:07:34.480 --> 0:07:38.760 are designations based on different fossil finds, but I think 0:07:38.800 --> 0:07:41.840 most experts agree that they refer to the same animal. 0:07:41.960 --> 0:07:46.239 So Dinohias Hollandy is a full skeleton found at Agate 0:07:46.400 --> 0:07:50.640 Springs Fossil Quarry in Nebraska, whereas Diodon was a genus 0:07:50.640 --> 0:07:54.160 that was established earlier on the basis of less complete 0:07:54.160 --> 0:07:57.480 fossil remains. So it gets kind of confusing because you 0:07:57.520 --> 0:08:00.880 will find references to both names used SEP Britly in 0:08:00.920 --> 0:08:03.520 different sources. But as best I can tell, these are 0:08:03.760 --> 0:08:08.120 probably the same genus or the same species, whatever you 0:08:08.160 --> 0:08:14.800 call them, Diodon or Dinohias. These animals were magnificent, with huge, devastating, 0:08:15.000 --> 0:08:19.040 awe inspiring skulls and rob I have attached some images 0:08:19.080 --> 0:08:21.920 for you to look at in the outline here. Folks 0:08:21.960 --> 0:08:23.960 at home, if you want to try to google a 0:08:24.080 --> 0:08:27.760 Dinohias or Diodon skull. You can do that yourself, but 0:08:27.840 --> 0:08:29.560 I'll for the people who can't look it up, I 0:08:29.600 --> 0:08:33.640 will describe it as best I can. For the full skeleton, 0:08:34.200 --> 0:08:37.760 imagine a body that looks kind of like a buffalo 0:08:37.920 --> 0:08:42.679 or a rhinoceros, with raised neural spines over the backbone 0:08:42.720 --> 0:08:46.319 at the shoulder, kind of like a suspension bridge, implying 0:08:46.360 --> 0:08:49.120 this massive shoulder hump at the base of the neck 0:08:49.200 --> 0:08:53.079 to hold up an enormous head. And it did have 0:08:53.120 --> 0:08:57.640 an enormous head, the huge, deep, powerful jaws under a 0:08:57.720 --> 0:09:02.880 long snout with canines that somehow look like both sharpened 0:09:02.920 --> 0:09:07.840 fangs and crushingly thick blunt bats at the same time. 0:09:08.960 --> 0:09:11.760 The skull could be huge, could be up to ninety 0:09:11.800 --> 0:09:15.280 centimeters long, or about thirty five or maybe even forty 0:09:15.320 --> 0:09:18.600 five percent of the total body length. So this is 0:09:18.640 --> 0:09:22.040 a big, powerful animal with a big, powerful skull a 0:09:22.120 --> 0:09:23.040 crushing bite. 0:09:23.400 --> 0:09:25.560 Yeah, I mean, you almost get the sense of it 0:09:25.760 --> 0:09:29.720 being like the combination of a bear and a horse. 0:09:29.960 --> 0:09:32.280 You know, it's kind of like the fierceness of a 0:09:32.280 --> 0:09:36.080 bear skull, but far like thicker and longer. 0:09:36.600 --> 0:09:39.000 We're gonna have to keep all of the different cross 0:09:39.040 --> 0:09:42.080 between analogies going. There will be a number of them 0:09:42.400 --> 0:09:45.080 as we go through. But one thing I wanted to 0:09:45.080 --> 0:09:47.400 point out for you, Rob is if you look around 0:09:47.559 --> 0:09:50.520 on the skull of this animal, you will see not 0:09:50.640 --> 0:09:55.840 just teeth, but these strange little solid knobs of bone 0:09:56.120 --> 0:09:59.800 poking out at several places from the bone of the skull. 0:10:00.000 --> 0:10:03.240 They're not teeth, they're like say along the bottom of 0:10:03.400 --> 0:10:06.800 the jaw, under the lower jawbone, or behind the eye. 0:10:06.960 --> 0:10:10.440 On the upper part of the skull. They will have 0:10:10.520 --> 0:10:13.160 these protrusions. They just like parts of the bone that 0:10:13.320 --> 0:10:16.120 stick out, almost as if they're like, you know, something's 0:10:16.160 --> 0:10:17.439 going to be hanging from them. 0:10:18.200 --> 0:10:18.960 Yeah. 0:10:19.080 --> 0:10:19.560 I was thinking. 0:10:19.640 --> 0:10:21.680 It's almost like the animal's head is like a rock 0:10:21.720 --> 0:10:24.600 climbing wall. It's got little, you know, handholds and stuff 0:10:24.600 --> 0:10:24.840 on it. 0:10:25.040 --> 0:10:26.360 Yeah, a lot of nooks and crannies. 0:10:26.640 --> 0:10:26.920 Yeah. 0:10:26.960 --> 0:10:29.679 And so these protruding bone formations may have had a 0:10:29.720 --> 0:10:34.360 couple of different purposes, perhaps defensive in nature, but also 0:10:34.800 --> 0:10:38.680 possibly related to increasing the power of muscles that worked 0:10:38.760 --> 0:10:41.240 the jaw in the head. Again, this creature had a 0:10:41.240 --> 0:10:43.840 powerful bite. It could chew you up and maybe bite 0:10:43.880 --> 0:10:48.360 you in half. So the dadon would have stood probably 0:10:48.440 --> 0:10:51.360 a little under two meters tall at the shoulder. I 0:10:51.400 --> 0:10:55.079 already gave one weight estimate earlier, the nine hundred kilograms. 0:10:55.120 --> 0:10:57.640 It's not known for sure how much mass would have 0:10:57.679 --> 0:11:00.680 attached to the skeleton. But even if you go down 0:11:00.679 --> 0:11:03.800 from the nine hundred kilograms estimate that they cite in Britannica, 0:11:03.960 --> 0:11:07.800 other sources guests around seven hundred and fifty kilograms, and 0:11:08.000 --> 0:11:11.640 for comparison, that is bigger than most estimates you get 0:11:11.679 --> 0:11:15.840 for adult male brown bears. So whether you're in the 0:11:15.880 --> 0:11:20.959 Clydesdale territory or just like surpassing the large brown bear class, 0:11:21.400 --> 0:11:24.280 it should put respect for nature's power into your brain 0:11:24.360 --> 0:11:27.160 and in dear blood. Here and at the same time 0:11:27.200 --> 0:11:29.600 that you're looking at this skull, if you go back 0:11:29.679 --> 0:11:34.199 and look at the legs, they don't look like something 0:11:34.240 --> 0:11:38.640 that really fits with the skull. This is a hoofed mammal, 0:11:38.840 --> 0:11:43.480 and the legs actually appear fairly slender. And so the 0:11:43.600 --> 0:11:48.320 pairing of this amazing, frightening skull and mouth with the 0:11:48.360 --> 0:11:50.959 fact that its feet are hoofd and that its legs 0:11:50.960 --> 0:11:54.160 almost look kind of like deer legs or something something 0:11:54.160 --> 0:11:57.840 we associate with prey animals, animals that humans hunt and 0:11:57.960 --> 0:12:01.640 eat or domesticate and use for milk and work. The 0:12:01.679 --> 0:12:04.040 feet and the legs do not look like those of 0:12:04.120 --> 0:12:07.400 wild beasts that could probably chomp us in half. So 0:12:07.760 --> 0:12:11.520 should we think of in telodonts as predators. We can 0:12:11.520 --> 0:12:14.319 come back to that question now to pivot a bit 0:12:14.360 --> 0:12:17.640 and go on a short tangent away from the overtly 0:12:17.760 --> 0:12:22.040 crushingly horrifying. I want to shift to the uncanny, the creepy, 0:12:22.120 --> 0:12:26.040 the unwholesome and unnatural. So Rob, I've got a link 0:12:26.080 --> 0:12:27.520 for you to look at here. I've also got an 0:12:27.520 --> 0:12:30.439 image in the outline for you. Again, I will try 0:12:30.480 --> 0:12:32.440 to describe for you folks at home so you can 0:12:32.480 --> 0:12:35.160 picture it as well. But the thing we're about to 0:12:35.200 --> 0:12:38.840 look at here is actually a sculpture. It is a 0:12:38.880 --> 0:12:42.439 sculpture of the animal we have just been talking about, 0:12:42.520 --> 0:12:45.480 and it is held in the collection of the Carnegie 0:12:45.559 --> 0:12:48.480 Museum of Natural History. You can find a picture of 0:12:48.520 --> 0:12:52.040 it easily if you search for Carnegie din Ohias. I 0:12:52.080 --> 0:12:53.760 want to give a shout out that I found out 0:12:53.760 --> 0:12:57.000 about this sculpture by reading a Carnegie Museum blog post 0:12:57.080 --> 0:13:00.800 from January twenty nineteen by a collection an assistant for 0:13:00.880 --> 0:13:05.719 the section of Vertebrate Paleontology named Joe Sauchak. So this 0:13:05.840 --> 0:13:09.920 sculpture was created in nineteen oh nine by an American 0:13:10.000 --> 0:13:13.760 artist named Theodore Augustus Mills, who lived from eighteen thirty 0:13:13.840 --> 0:13:17.400 nine to nineteen sixteen. Mills worked for a number of institutions, 0:13:17.440 --> 0:13:21.240 including the Smithsonian and the Carnegie Museum, and was the 0:13:21.280 --> 0:13:25.520 son of sculptor Clark Mills, who famously made a cast 0:13:25.679 --> 0:13:28.840 of the face of President Abraham Lincoln in eighteen sixty five, 0:13:29.280 --> 0:13:33.840 which a younger Theodore assisted with. But this Dinohias sculpture 0:13:34.040 --> 0:13:39.240 is perhaps an art movement unto itself. Sawchak writes that 0:13:39.440 --> 0:13:44.240 as powerful and amazing as the Deodon or Dinohias bones are, 0:13:44.760 --> 0:13:49.480 quote to several members of the Vertebrate Paleontology staff, including myself, 0:13:49.520 --> 0:13:53.280 the model lovingly known as the Highest is perhaps even 0:13:53.360 --> 0:13:57.640 more horrifying than the actual creature itself. So, Rob, I've 0:13:57.640 --> 0:13:59.240 got the photo in here for you to look at, 0:13:59.240 --> 0:14:01.880 alongside a hedge out of Peter Lorrie, just for reference. 0:14:02.640 --> 0:14:06.160 And so the author of this blog post tries to 0:14:06.280 --> 0:14:10.040 identify exactly what the museum staff finds so creepy and 0:14:10.080 --> 0:14:13.880 fascinating about the sculpture. He mentioned something about the eyes 0:14:14.040 --> 0:14:18.439 that seems especially human and emotive. But I do have 0:14:18.480 --> 0:14:21.520 to agree there is something really special about this piece 0:14:21.640 --> 0:14:25.720 of three dimensional paleo art that it is at once 0:14:26.120 --> 0:14:29.560 alien and disturbingly human. I think parts of it are 0:14:29.640 --> 0:14:33.800 hitting Uncanny Valley territory because we're getting sort of like 0:14:34.040 --> 0:14:39.280 a pig, giant pig horse with human eyes energy. But 0:14:39.440 --> 0:14:42.600 also it looks like it's about to tell me something, 0:14:42.680 --> 0:14:45.000 like it's about to tell me a secret, and it's 0:14:45.040 --> 0:14:47.920 a secret I don't want to know, and it's grinning 0:14:48.000 --> 0:14:49.600 because it knows that I don't want to know. 0:14:50.200 --> 0:14:53.600 Oh yeah, I mean it's definitely looking at me. It's 0:14:53.640 --> 0:14:56.560 definitely looking at many I feel like to some degree 0:14:56.680 --> 0:15:00.760 judging me, but judging me fairly. Judge like it is 0:15:00.800 --> 0:15:03.720 making a fair assessment of me. And yes, to your point, 0:15:03.960 --> 0:15:06.000 perhaps I don't really want to hear it, but maybe 0:15:06.040 --> 0:15:08.320 I do want to hear it. Maybe what this creature 0:15:08.320 --> 0:15:10.520 has to share with me will bring a lot of 0:15:10.560 --> 0:15:12.000 positive change into my life. 0:15:12.480 --> 0:15:15.080 Oh okay, well, I like the open mindedness with which 0:15:15.080 --> 0:15:18.120 you're approaching this creature. Yeah, maybe, maybe the thing, the 0:15:18.160 --> 0:15:20.600 secret that is going to share is actually great wisdom. 0:15:20.640 --> 0:15:23.640 It's wisdom you need and you just aren't ready to accept. 0:15:24.000 --> 0:15:26.440 But I do not get the sense that it wants 0:15:26.480 --> 0:15:30.240 to eat me. I get the sense that it is 0:15:30.320 --> 0:15:34.000 a bit more benign when it comes to matters of 0:15:34.520 --> 0:15:35.040 the flesh. 0:15:35.600 --> 0:15:39.360 It's really funny to me how much this paleo art image, 0:15:39.400 --> 0:15:42.440 with the you know, the the fully constructed image, with 0:15:42.520 --> 0:15:46.520 its kind of serene, placid eyes gazing into your mind 0:15:46.600 --> 0:15:48.760 and maybe hypnotizing you maybe you're about to do some 0:15:48.840 --> 0:15:52.760 scanners stuff on you, how much that does not comport 0:15:53.000 --> 0:15:57.280 with the the just the fierceness suggested by the bones. 0:15:58.040 --> 0:16:00.440 This is often the case, though, isn't it. I mean, 0:16:01.040 --> 0:16:03.680 one of the prime exit, I mean, the main prime 0:16:03.680 --> 0:16:05.960 example here would of course, be the human skull. You 0:16:06.000 --> 0:16:07.880 get a totally different vibe looking at a human skull 0:16:07.880 --> 0:16:10.040 looking at a human face. But you know, that's almost 0:16:10.080 --> 0:16:12.200 to be expected because you also have to confront a 0:16:12.240 --> 0:16:14.040 lot about your own mortality when you look at a 0:16:14.040 --> 0:16:16.960 skull of a human. I think it's more pronounced when 0:16:17.000 --> 0:16:20.440 you see I think that the other readily available example 0:16:20.520 --> 0:16:22.880 is the skull of the horse, Like the horse is 0:16:23.000 --> 0:16:27.960 a domesticated animal that many judge to be you know, 0:16:28.400 --> 0:16:31.480 basically in the same realm as that of the dog 0:16:31.600 --> 0:16:35.760 in terms of human animal relationships. You know, it is 0:16:35.800 --> 0:16:39.600 an animal that is very close to us, and ultimately 0:16:39.640 --> 0:16:41.880 there's a strong case to be made that it's more 0:16:41.960 --> 0:16:46.680 essential to the development of human civilization than anything any 0:16:46.680 --> 0:16:51.120 other animal that we've domesticated. But while we look at 0:16:51.120 --> 0:16:54.200 a horse, you know, we tend to see something again, 0:16:54.280 --> 0:16:58.800 more benign, a friend of humanity, something noble and proud, 0:16:59.560 --> 0:17:02.320 beautiful even. But you look at the skull of the 0:17:02.360 --> 0:17:04.800 horse and you get this sense of kind of a 0:17:04.840 --> 0:17:08.640 grinning demon. And people have, you know, had I think, 0:17:08.680 --> 0:17:11.600 similar connections with the with the skull of the horse 0:17:12.320 --> 0:17:18.080 for ages, you know, often incorporating it into designs of 0:17:18.119 --> 0:17:21.440 supernatural beings or utilizing the horse skull in some way 0:17:21.560 --> 0:17:25.639 that is you know, magical, perhaps protective magic and so forth. 0:17:26.160 --> 0:17:28.800 And I don't know, I guess maybe it is easy 0:17:28.880 --> 0:17:32.720 to lose sight of that when you're dealing with the 0:17:32.760 --> 0:17:36.160 skeletal remains of a prehistoric organism in which we don't 0:17:36.200 --> 0:17:38.600 know what the fleshed version of the face looked like. 0:17:39.160 --> 0:17:41.680 Yeah, yeah, And this is a great reminder of something 0:17:41.720 --> 0:17:44.760 we've talked about on the show before about how you 0:17:44.800 --> 0:17:49.160 know paleo art is necessarily, to some extent an interpretive enterprise. 0:17:49.520 --> 0:17:51.760 In some cases you have more than just the bones, 0:17:51.800 --> 0:17:54.119 but in a lot of cases you just have fossils, 0:17:54.359 --> 0:17:58.240 maybe not even a complete skeleton. But you know, even 0:17:58.240 --> 0:18:01.960 if you do have a complete a near complete fossil skeleton, 0:18:02.320 --> 0:18:05.439 that doesn't necessarily tell you what the soft tissue looked 0:18:05.480 --> 0:18:08.359 like on the outside. So you know, you can have 0:18:08.560 --> 0:18:12.520 ways of informing the guesses made, like paleo art can 0:18:12.560 --> 0:18:16.239 be informed by scientific knowledge, but you're still having to 0:18:16.440 --> 0:18:17.199 make some guesses. 0:18:17.240 --> 0:18:18.720 You're having to make some leaps. 0:18:19.400 --> 0:18:21.919 Didn't we discuss my memories a little foggy on this, 0:18:22.000 --> 0:18:24.920 But didn't we discuss some examples of like intentionally bad 0:18:24.960 --> 0:18:30.560 paleo art reconstructing existing organisms like living organisms. 0:18:31.000 --> 0:18:33.159 I think I recall what you're talking about, and I 0:18:33.200 --> 0:18:36.720 think we were talking about the quote shrink wrapping phenomenon, 0:18:36.840 --> 0:18:40.520 where it's like a lot of extinct animals or just 0:18:40.600 --> 0:18:43.800 you take the bones and then you imagine skin tightly 0:18:43.840 --> 0:18:46.479 wrapped around those bones and cutting out a lot of 0:18:46.520 --> 0:18:49.600 the kind of bulk or soft tissue that you actually 0:18:49.600 --> 0:18:52.040 see on some animals, and so yeah, I think the 0:18:52.119 --> 0:18:54.760 idea was taking the skeletons of animals we know today 0:18:54.800 --> 0:18:57.320 and cutting out all of the excess soft tissue and 0:18:57.359 --> 0:18:58.400 just shrink wrapping them. 0:18:58.920 --> 0:19:01.879 Okay, I think that that is what I was thinking of. 0:19:02.000 --> 0:19:04.520 But it's easy to take that idea of the shrink wrapping. 0:19:04.920 --> 0:19:07.760 Look at say a horse skeleton, and then imagine like 0:19:07.800 --> 0:19:12.280 the shrink wrapped paleo art version of an extant horse. 0:19:12.359 --> 0:19:15.639 You know, it would be this nightmare steed, you know. 0:19:16.400 --> 0:19:18.480 And I mean you could apply something similar to humans. 0:19:18.520 --> 0:19:20.080 We would all look like some sort of a ghoul. 0:19:20.320 --> 0:19:23.320 Right, Yeah, Well, anyway, I do want to admit that, 0:19:23.480 --> 0:19:26.960 you know, I don't have enough expertise in the anatomy 0:19:27.280 --> 0:19:31.480 or physiology of these extinct mammals to judge whether the 0:19:31.920 --> 0:19:36.720 Carnegie the Carnegie Museum statue is I don't know, is 0:19:37.240 --> 0:19:41.040 anywhere close to right or not. But there is one 0:19:41.040 --> 0:19:43.679 thing that I thought was interesting about it, which is 0:19:43.720 --> 0:19:47.240 that the overly human eyes do kind of connect to 0:19:47.359 --> 0:19:50.640 an interesting scientific fact about the antelodonts, which is that 0:19:50.720 --> 0:19:54.160 they had more forward facing eye placement than a lot 0:19:54.200 --> 0:19:58.400 of ardiodactyls, which raises questions about their survival strategies. 0:19:59.160 --> 0:20:00.920 On a lot of hoofed. 0:20:00.640 --> 0:20:03.880 Mammals, you will see the eyes the eyes spread more 0:20:03.920 --> 0:20:07.119 to the sides, which does that can be helpful, especially 0:20:07.200 --> 0:20:09.800 to prey animals, because it gives them a wider field 0:20:09.880 --> 0:20:13.040 of vision, so it's easier for them to see predators approaching. 0:20:13.520 --> 0:20:16.959 But the more forward shifted gaze of the antelodonts suggests 0:20:16.960 --> 0:20:20.439 some other pressures in play. Oh and just quickly for 0:20:20.560 --> 0:20:24.200 contrast on paleo art for these hell pigs, I wanted 0:20:24.240 --> 0:20:26.640 to attach a couple more images for you to look at. 0:20:27.000 --> 0:20:29.760 They both look pretty interesting. One is one I've just 0:20:29.800 --> 0:20:32.840 seen floating around the internet, sited a few different times. 0:20:33.119 --> 0:20:38.280 One is I think seemingly associated with the Encyclopedia Britannica resources. 0:20:38.640 --> 0:20:40.840 And that one is funny to me because it looks 0:20:40.920 --> 0:20:44.560 like a crocodile horse pig with face spikes doing the 0:20:44.640 --> 0:20:45.879 meme troll face. 0:20:47.359 --> 0:20:50.040 I mean, it's very toothy. It looks like, how is 0:20:50.040 --> 0:20:52.719 this mouth supposed to shut? It kind of implies an 0:20:52.800 --> 0:20:55.199 organism that cannot close its mouth all the way. It 0:20:55.240 --> 0:20:56.439 just has monster jaws. 0:20:56.880 --> 0:21:00.119 Well, that's another funny thing where so it looks hilarious 0:21:00.119 --> 0:21:02.120 in the picture this way, because it looks like this 0:21:02.200 --> 0:21:05.359 animal is laughing at me, laughing at my misfortune and grief. 0:21:06.240 --> 0:21:09.960 But there is an interesting thing about these the antilidants, 0:21:09.960 --> 0:21:14.280 which is that they could apparently open their jaws extremely wide. 0:21:15.800 --> 0:21:17.000 Well that makes me feel worse. 0:21:17.320 --> 0:21:29.159 Yeah, So I wanted to come back to the question 0:21:29.400 --> 0:21:32.960 are these animals really pigs? They have been called hell 0:21:33.160 --> 0:21:37.200 pigs in popular media and books and articles, but apparently 0:21:37.280 --> 0:21:39.520 this is probably. 0:21:39.080 --> 0:21:40.760 Not exactly accurate. 0:21:41.520 --> 0:21:44.720 Pigs, swine, and hogs are animals that belong to the 0:21:44.760 --> 0:21:50.280 mammal family Suidy. And while the antilodonts do share some 0:21:50.800 --> 0:21:54.600 morphological features in common with pigs, like it's not hard 0:21:54.640 --> 0:21:57.800 to see with some of these remains why someone would 0:21:57.840 --> 0:21:59.320 look at them and say, oh, this is some type 0:21:59.359 --> 0:22:02.280 of giant pig, like there are pig like things about it. 0:22:03.160 --> 0:22:06.440 But more recent research has shown that pigs are probably 0:22:06.480 --> 0:22:10.720 not the their closest relatives in the ardiodactyl order, and 0:22:10.800 --> 0:22:14.160 in fact what their closest relatives are is maybe even 0:22:14.200 --> 0:22:17.080 more interesting. So there have been findings about this going 0:22:17.119 --> 0:22:19.520 back for years now. This is not like a new discovery. 0:22:20.200 --> 0:22:23.000 But for an example of a more recent paper supporting 0:22:23.080 --> 0:22:27.080 the division between antilodonts and pigs, I came across This 0:22:27.160 --> 0:22:31.640 paper by Yang Yu Hong, Yang Gao, Chang Li, and 0:22:32.000 --> 0:22:35.679 Xijun Ni, published in the Journal of Systematic Paleontology in 0:22:35.720 --> 0:22:40.320 twenty twenty three, called a new antilidont ardiodactyl mammalia from 0:22:40.359 --> 0:22:44.760 the Late Eocene of China and its phylogenetic implications. This 0:22:44.960 --> 0:22:47.760 paper is a report on a new genus and species 0:22:47.800 --> 0:22:54.360 of antelodontity. This one is known as Antilodontellis Julianji and 0:22:54.600 --> 0:22:59.520 it's and basically, they say based on finding remnants of 0:22:59.600 --> 0:23:03.600 the animal's lower jaw and then comparing this animal to 0:23:04.920 --> 0:23:09.080 comparing this newly discovered antilodont to other ardiodactyls, the authors 0:23:09.119 --> 0:23:14.960 conclude that the antilodonts are situated within the clade setancodonto Morpha, 0:23:15.520 --> 0:23:19.520 which means that they are quote more closely related to 0:23:19.600 --> 0:23:25.880 hippopotamus and cetaceans than to suena. So the hell pigs 0:23:26.000 --> 0:23:29.320 are not pigs as we understand them today, and are 0:23:29.440 --> 0:23:34.080 probably more distant cousins of pigs and closer cousins of 0:23:34.280 --> 0:23:39.280