WEBVTT - From the Vault: The Hogs of Hell, Part 2 0:00:06.200 --> 0:00:08.719 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:00:08.760 --> 0:00:11.080 is Robert Lamb. It is Saturday, so we have a 0:00:11.119 --> 0:00:12.760 vault episode for you. This is going to be The 0:00:12.760 --> 0:00:16.439 Hogs of Hell Part two. It originally published ten twenty nine, 0:00:16.560 --> 0:00:20.599 twenty twenty four. Let's jump right in. And Arthur went 0:00:20.680 --> 0:00:24.240 as far as esquier Orvo in Ireland, to the place 0:00:24.280 --> 0:00:27.840 where the boar Troweth was with his seven young pigs, 0:00:28.280 --> 0:00:31.280 and the dogs were let loose upon him from all sides. 0:00:31.960 --> 0:00:35.400 That day until evening, the Irish fought with him. Nevertheless, 0:00:35.440 --> 0:00:38.920 he laid waste the fifth part of Ireland. And on 0:00:38.960 --> 0:00:42.400 the day following the household of Arthur fought with him, 0:00:42.440 --> 0:00:45.680 and they were worsted by him and got no advantage. 0:00:46.080 --> 0:00:48.920 And the third day Arthur himself encountered him, and he 0:00:49.040 --> 0:00:51.839 fought with him nine nights and nine days, without so 0:00:51.960 --> 0:00:56.240 much as killing even one little pig. The warriors inquired 0:00:56.320 --> 0:00:59.280 of Arthur what was the origin of that swine, and 0:00:59.360 --> 0:01:02.040 he told them that he was once a king, and 0:01:02.080 --> 0:01:09.760 that God had transformed him into a swine for his sins. 0:01:10.200 --> 0:01:13.960 Welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind production of iHeartRadio. 0:01:19.840 --> 0:01:22.080 Hey, welcome to Stuff to Blow your Mind. My name 0:01:22.120 --> 0:01:22.720 is Robert. 0:01:22.560 --> 0:01:25.480 Lamb and I am Joe McCormick, and we're back with 0:01:25.560 --> 0:01:29.959 part two in our Halloween season series called Hogs of Hell. 0:01:30.480 --> 0:01:30.560 Now. 0:01:30.640 --> 0:01:34.800 In the previous episode, we focused mostly on mythology and fiction, 0:01:35.319 --> 0:01:40.240 looking at a glorious assortment of monster pigs, beelze bores, 0:01:40.600 --> 0:01:44.880 and also a few rather benevolent divine suiform beings of 0:01:45.040 --> 0:01:48.400 various types. So in terms of specific examples, we talked 0:01:48.440 --> 0:01:52.720 about everything from the vicious, shaggy, froth jawed Aromanthian boar 0:01:52.920 --> 0:01:56.040 which was captured by Hercules in Greek myth to the 0:01:56.080 --> 0:01:59.680 noble and heroic pig featured incarnation of the Hindu god 0:01:59.760 --> 0:02:03.040 vision Sew, who retrieves the earth when it is rolled 0:02:03.120 --> 0:02:05.440 up and stolen away to the ocean depths by a 0:02:05.480 --> 0:02:08.560 great demon. And here we are again today to keep 0:02:08.600 --> 0:02:11.040 the monster pig parade on the March. 0:02:11.800 --> 0:02:14.160 And indeed, in the last episode we did talk a 0:02:14.200 --> 0:02:19.720 little bit about King Arthur battling various bores across the 0:02:19.720 --> 0:02:22.000 British Isle, so I wanted to at the top of 0:02:22.000 --> 0:02:25.040 this episode throwing just a little quote that gives you 0:02:25.080 --> 0:02:27.840 a taste of that, though it doesn't really reference all 0:02:27.919 --> 0:02:29.640 the gorings that also take place. 0:02:30.600 --> 0:02:34.720 Yeah. I like how it says the warriors were like, hey, Arthur, 0:02:34.880 --> 0:02:38.520 we've been fighting this pig and it's worsting us. I 0:02:38.520 --> 0:02:41.360 don't know if it was like different than being bested 0:02:41.360 --> 0:02:43.480 by a pig, to be worsted by a pig, but 0:02:43.560 --> 0:02:46.080 it's besting all the nights. And they're like, Arthur, where 0:02:46.080 --> 0:02:48.360 did this pig come from? And Arthur is like, well, 0:02:48.480 --> 0:02:50.200 this pig was once a king, but he was a 0:02:50.320 --> 0:02:51.840 bad king, not like me. 0:02:52.360 --> 0:02:54.400 I have to question his management style a little bit 0:02:54.520 --> 0:02:57.480 for not like fully briefing everyone on the nature of 0:02:57.520 --> 0:02:59.359 these boors. Was he just like, Hey, we're gonna go 0:02:59.440 --> 0:03:02.880 wage war against pigs for a few months here, and 0:03:02.880 --> 0:03:05.799 they're like, okay, sure, that sounds like a reasonable thing 0:03:05.840 --> 0:03:06.040 to do. 0:03:06.600 --> 0:03:09.720 Yeah, why not? Anyway, I wanted to kick things off 0:03:09.760 --> 0:03:14.079 today by turning to the world of palaeontology, because it 0:03:14.240 --> 0:03:17.800 so happens. You do not have to go into mythology 0:03:17.919 --> 0:03:22.919 and fiction to meet some blood curdling monster pigs or perhaps, 0:03:23.000 --> 0:03:26.639 to be more accurate, maybe not pigs but blood curdling 0:03:26.760 --> 0:03:31.280 monster hoofed mammals with some pig like features. Well, hash 0:03:31.320 --> 0:03:33.640 out what's really a pig? And what's not as we 0:03:33.720 --> 0:03:36.600 go along. But the point is, if you go back 0:03:36.720 --> 0:03:40.280 maybe twenty thirty million years into the fossil record, you 0:03:40.360 --> 0:03:43.840 will encounter a branch of the mammal family tree that 0:03:43.880 --> 0:03:49.480 has been affectionately nicknamed the hell pigs and perhaps less tastefully, 0:03:49.600 --> 0:03:53.520 the terminator pigs. That's got to be a subsequent nickname there. 0:03:53.440 --> 0:03:56.760 Right, yeah, yeah, I don't know how clinical that is. 0:03:57.360 --> 0:04:00.640 Now. Hell pigs is just a cute name that has 0:04:00.720 --> 0:04:04.920 been used in popular media. I found earlier sources from 0:04:04.960 --> 0:04:07.640 the nineteen twenties which refer to the same class of 0:04:07.640 --> 0:04:13.040 animals by calling them giant pigs. In scientific nomenclature, these 0:04:13.120 --> 0:04:16.640 creatures we're going to be talking about are called antilodonts 0:04:17.200 --> 0:04:23.839 e nte l odnt intilodonts. They belong to the family Intilodontidy, 0:04:24.480 --> 0:04:28.440 which is now completely extinct. The family name comes from 0:04:28.480 --> 0:04:33.599 the Greek intellus, meaning complete or perfect, and odon, meaning tooth, 0:04:33.720 --> 0:04:37.480 so the antilodont is the beast of the perfect tooth, 0:04:37.600 --> 0:04:41.640 or the beast of the complete tooth. The antilodont family 0:04:41.839 --> 0:04:46.400 is a member of the order Arteodactyla, which for much 0:04:46.440 --> 0:04:50.920 of scientific history were known as the even toed ungulates 0:04:51.040 --> 0:04:55.680 ungulates meaning a hoofed animal even toad ungilates, referring to 0:04:55.720 --> 0:04:58.760 the fact that most branches of this order bear their 0:04:58.800 --> 0:05:02.919 weight primarily on two toes per foot. Now, despite the 0:05:03.120 --> 0:05:06.840 historical classification based on this feature, more recent research has 0:05:06.880 --> 0:05:09.200 shown that not all of the animals in this branch 0:05:09.240 --> 0:05:13.479 of mammalia are actually ungulates or hoofed animals as traditionally understood. 0:05:14.120 --> 0:05:21.320 So Ardiodactyls today consist of more well known ungulates like deer, bison, cattle, sheep, 0:05:21.400 --> 0:05:27.440 and goats, but also camels, pigs, giraffes, hippopotamuses, and maybe 0:05:27.480 --> 0:05:32.600 most surprisingly, whales and dolphins, because remember, whales evolved from 0:05:32.720 --> 0:05:36.200 animals that used to live entirely on land and millions 0:05:36.240 --> 0:05:40.240 of years ago, made the gradual adaptive transition to more 0:05:40.279 --> 0:05:44.320 and more water based lifestyle and physiology over time, until 0:05:44.360 --> 0:05:47.840 eventually they were fully water dwelling creatures. Having come, you 0:05:48.200 --> 0:05:51.520 began as fish, moved onto the land, become mammals, and 0:05:51.520 --> 0:05:52.960 then moved back into the water. 0:05:53.680 --> 0:05:55.480 Yeah, quite a journey. 0:05:55.600 --> 0:05:59.120 In telodonts, the so called hell pigs first show up 0:05:59.160 --> 0:06:02.000 in the fossil reccred sometime in the middle of the 0:06:02.080 --> 0:06:06.039 Eocene epoch, which began roughly fifty five million years ago, 0:06:06.120 --> 0:06:09.600 placing it about ten million years after the extinction of 0:06:09.640 --> 0:06:13.680 the non avian dinosaurs, and continued until about thirty four 0:06:13.760 --> 0:06:15.960 million years ago. I don't know if this has been 0:06:15.960 --> 0:06:19.479 superseded by any more recent fossil finds, but at least 0:06:19.480 --> 0:06:22.080 for a while, it was thought that antilodonts first appeared 0:06:22.080 --> 0:06:25.039 in the area that is now Mongolia and then spread 0:06:25.080 --> 0:06:29.040 across the globe. First spread across much of Asia and 0:06:29.200 --> 0:06:33.560 then to North America and Europe as well, and numerous 0:06:33.680 --> 0:06:37.760 species of antilodonts thrived during the Oligocene epic, and then 0:06:37.800 --> 0:06:40.800 they appeared to have died out in the early Miocene 0:06:41.360 --> 0:06:45.800 between nineteen and sixteen million years ago. So one thing 0:06:45.839 --> 0:06:48.560 that's worth emphasizing is that we're not talking about one 0:06:48.720 --> 0:06:52.400 specific species of animal. We're talking about this family. So 0:06:52.440 --> 0:06:56.000 there were many different species of antilodonts. The largest were 0:06:56.120 --> 0:06:59.760 probably according to now I've come across different estimates here. 0:07:00.000 --> 0:07:03.880 According to the estimate given by Encyclopedia Britannica, they could 0:07:03.920 --> 0:07:08.000 maybe get nine hundred kilograms. Britannica compares this to a 0:07:08.000 --> 0:07:11.840 Clydesdale horse, so you can picture giant fanged pigs pulling 0:07:11.880 --> 0:07:16.400 the Budweiser wagon. The largest known genus of Antilodont is 0:07:17.080 --> 0:07:23.440 confusingly known by several different names, primarily Dinohias di n 0:07:23.520 --> 0:07:27.840 o h y us, which means terrible pig or monstrous 0:07:27.880 --> 0:07:30.640 pig from the same formation that you get dinosaur, you know, 0:07:30.760 --> 0:07:37.640 terrible reptile, but then also is known as Deodon daeod 0:07:38.160 --> 0:07:41.600 n which means hostile tooth. It took me a while 0:07:41.640 --> 0:07:43.240 to figure out what was going on here, but it 0:07:43.280 --> 0:07:47.560 seems that the type species in question here is known 0:07:47.600 --> 0:07:53.680 as either Dinohias hollandi or Diodon shoshonensis, and these are 0:07:53.800 --> 0:07:58.080 designations based on different fossil finds, but I think most 0:07:58.120 --> 0:08:02.040 experts agree that they refer to the animals. So Dinohias 0:08:02.040 --> 0:08:06.200 hollandy is a full skeleton found at Agate Spring's Fossil 0:08:06.280 --> 0:08:09.920 Quarry in Nebraska, whereas Diodon was a genus that was 0:08:10.000 --> 0:08:14.160 established earlier on the basis of less complete fossil remains. 0:08:14.480 --> 0:08:16.960 So it gets kind of confusing because you will find 0:08:17.000 --> 0:08:20.880 references to both names used separately in different sources. But 0:08:21.000 --> 0:08:23.760 as best I can tell, these are probably the same 0:08:23.880 --> 0:08:28.120 genus or the same species, whatever you call them, Diodon 0:08:28.280 --> 0:08:34.280 or Dinohias. These animals were magnificent, with huge, devastating, awe 0:08:34.400 --> 0:08:38.200 inspiring skulls and rob I have attached some images for 0:08:38.240 --> 0:08:41.320 you to look at in the outline here, folks at home, 0:08:41.360 --> 0:08:43.920 if you want to try to google a Dinohias or 0:08:43.960 --> 0:08:47.320 Diodon skull, you can do that yourself, but I'll for 0:08:47.360 --> 0:08:49.240 the people who can't look it up, I will describe 0:08:49.280 --> 0:08:53.840 it as best I can. For the full skeleton, imagine 0:08:54.200 --> 0:08:57.040 a body that looks kind of like a buffalo or 0:08:57.080 --> 0:09:01.920 a rhinoceros, with raised neural fines over the backbone at 0:09:01.920 --> 0:09:05.480 the shoulder, kind of like a suspension bridge, implying this 0:09:05.640 --> 0:09:08.320 massive shoulder hump at the base of the neck to 0:09:08.520 --> 0:09:12.280 hold up an enormous head. And it did have an 0:09:12.400 --> 0:09:17.080 enormous head, the huge, deep, powerful jaws under a long 0:09:17.160 --> 0:09:22.520 snout with canines that somehow look like both sharpened fangs 0:09:22.640 --> 0:09:28.080 and crushingly thick blunt bats at the same time. The 0:09:28.120 --> 0:09:31.840 skull could be huge, could be up to ninety centimeters long, 0:09:32.240 --> 0:09:34.960 or about thirty five or maybe even forty five percent 0:09:35.080 --> 0:09:38.040 of the total body length. So this is a big, 0:09:38.080 --> 0:09:42.080 powerful animal with a big, powerful skull a crushing bite. 0:09:42.440 --> 0:09:44.600 Yeah, I mean you almost get the sense of it 0:09:44.800 --> 0:09:48.240 being like the combination of a of a bear and 0:09:48.280 --> 0:09:51.160 a horse. You know, it's kind of like the fierceness 0:09:51.160 --> 0:09:55.120 of a bear skull, but far like thicker and longer. 0:09:55.640 --> 0:09:58.040 We're gonna have to keep all of the different cross 0:09:58.080 --> 0:10:01.120 between analogies going. There will be a number of them 0:10:01.160 --> 0:10:04.120 as we go through. But one thing I wanted to 0:10:04.120 --> 0:10:06.440 point out for you, Rob is if you look around 0:10:06.600 --> 0:10:09.560 on the skull of this animal, you will see not 0:10:09.679 --> 0:10:14.880 just teeth, but these strange little solid knobs of bone 0:10:15.160 --> 0:10:18.880 poking out at several places from the bone of the skull. 0:10:18.920 --> 0:10:21.880 So they're not teeth, they're like say along the bottom 0:10:22.040 --> 0:10:25.840 of the jaw, under the lower jawbone, or behind the eye. 0:10:26.000 --> 0:10:29.480 On the upper part of the skull, they will have 0:10:29.559 --> 0:10:32.200 these protrusions. They just like parts of the bone that 0:10:32.360 --> 0:10:35.160 stick out, almost as if they're like, you know, something's 0:10:35.200 --> 0:10:36.520 going to be hanging from them. 0:10:37.240 --> 0:10:38.000 Yeah. 0:10:38.120 --> 0:10:40.240 I was thinking it's almost like the animal's head is 0:10:40.280 --> 0:10:42.480 like a rock climbing wall. It's got little, you know, 0:10:42.559 --> 0:10:43.880 handholds and stuff on it. 0:10:44.080 --> 0:10:45.400 Yeah, a lot of nooks and crannies. 0:10:45.679 --> 0:10:48.640 Yeah, and so these protruding bone formations may have had 0:10:48.679 --> 0:10:52.960 a couple of different purposes, perhaps defensive in nature, but 0:10:53.080 --> 0:10:57.240 also possibly related to increasing the power of muscles that 0:10:57.400 --> 0:11:00.160 worked the jaw and the head. Again, this creature had 0:11:00.200 --> 0:11:02.600 a powerful bite. It could chew you up and maybe 0:11:02.640 --> 0:11:06.800 bite you in half. So the daton would have stood 0:11:06.880 --> 0:11:09.880 probably a little under two meters tall at the shoulder. 0:11:10.360 --> 0:11:14.160 I already gave one weight estimate earlier, the nine hundred kilograms. 0:11:14.160 --> 0:11:16.679 It's not known for sure how much mass would have 0:11:16.720 --> 0:11:19.720 attached to the skeleton, but even if you go down 0:11:19.720 --> 0:11:22.840 from the nine hundred kilograms estimate that they cite in Britannica, 0:11:23.000 --> 0:11:26.960 other sources guests around seven hundred and fifty kilograms, And 0:11:27.040 --> 0:11:30.679 for comparison, that is bigger than most estimates you get 0:11:30.720 --> 0:11:34.880 for adult male brown bears. So, whether you're in the 0:11:34.920 --> 0:11:40.000 Clydesdale territory or just like surpassing the large brown bear class, 0:11:40.440 --> 0:11:43.320 it should put respect for nature's power into your brain 0:11:43.400 --> 0:11:46.200 and in dear blood. Here and at the same time 0:11:46.240 --> 0:11:48.640 that you're looking at this skull, if you go back 0:11:48.720 --> 0:11:53.240 and look at the legs, they don't look like something 0:11:53.280 --> 0:11:57.680 that really fits with the skull. This is a hoofed mammal, 0:11:57.880 --> 0:12:02.600 and the legs actually appear fairly slender. And so the 0:12:02.640 --> 0:12:07.360 pairing of this amazing, frightening skull and mouth with the 0:12:07.400 --> 0:12:10.000 fact that its feet are hooved and that its legs 0:12:10.000 --> 0:12:13.160 almost look kind of like deer legs or something something 0:12:13.200 --> 0:12:16.880 we associate with prey animals, animals that humans hunt and 0:12:17.000 --> 0:12:20.680 eat or domesticate and use for milk and work. The 0:12:20.720 --> 0:12:23.080 feet and the legs do not look like those of 0:12:23.160 --> 0:12:26.440 wild beasts that could probably chomp us in half. So 0:12:26.800 --> 0:12:30.520 should we think of in telodonts as predators? We can 0:12:30.559 --> 0:12:33.360 come back to that question now to pivot a bit 0:12:33.400 --> 0:12:36.640 and go on a short tangent away from the overtly 0:12:36.800 --> 0:12:41.080 crushingly horrifying, I want to shift to the uncanny, the creepy, 0:12:41.160 --> 0:12:45.079 the unwholesome and unnatural. So Rob, I've got a link 0:12:45.120 --> 0:12:46.520 for you to look at here. I've also got an 0:12:46.559 --> 0:12:49.480 image in the outline for you. Again, I will try 0:12:49.520 --> 0:12:51.480 to describe for you folks at home so you can 0:12:51.520 --> 0:12:54.200 picture it as well. But the thing we're about to 0:12:54.240 --> 0:12:57.880 look at here is actually a sculpture. It is a 0:12:57.920 --> 0:13:01.480 sculpture of the animal we have just been talking about, 0:13:01.559 --> 0:13:04.520 and it is held in the collection of the Carnegie 0:13:04.600 --> 0:13:07.520 Museum of Natural History. You can find a picture of 0:13:07.559 --> 0:13:11.040 it easily if you search for Carnegie din Ohias. I 0:13:11.120 --> 0:13:12.800 want to give a shout out that I found out 0:13:12.800 --> 0:13:16.120 about this sculpture by reading a Carnegie Museum blog post 0:13:16.120 --> 0:13:20.000 from January twenty nineteen by a collection assistant for the 0:13:20.040 --> 0:13:25.400 section of Vertebrate Paleontology named Joe Sauchak. So this sculpture 0:13:25.720 --> 0:13:29.400 was created in nineteen oh nine by an American artist 0:13:29.520 --> 0:13:33.040 named Theodore Augustus Mills, who lived from eighteen thirty nine 0:13:33.080 --> 0:13:36.439 to nineteen sixteen. Mills worked for a number of institutions, 0:13:36.480 --> 0:13:40.280 including the Smithsonian and the Carnegie Museum, and was the 0:13:40.320 --> 0:13:44.560 son of sculptor Clark Mills, who famously made a cast 0:13:44.720 --> 0:13:47.880 of the face of President Abraham Lincoln in eighteen sixty five, 0:13:48.320 --> 0:13:52.400 which a younger Theodore assisted with. But this din Ohias 0:13:52.400 --> 0:13:57.720 sculpture is perhaps an art movement unto itself. A Sawchak 0:13:57.760 --> 0:14:01.280 writes that as a powerful and amazing as the Deodon 0:14:01.440 --> 0:14:05.920 or Dinahias bones are quote to several members of the 0:14:06.080 --> 0:14:10.280 Vertebrate Paleontology staff, including myself, the model lovingly known as 0:14:10.440 --> 0:14:14.240 the highest is perhaps even more horrifying than the actual 0:14:14.280 --> 0:14:17.560 creature itself. So Rob, I've got the photo in here 0:14:17.559 --> 0:14:20.080 for you to look at, alongside a headshot of Peter Lorrie, 0:14:20.160 --> 0:14:24.200 just for reference. And so the author of this blog 0:14:24.240 --> 0:14:28.200 post tries to identify exactly what the museum staff finds 0:14:28.240 --> 0:14:32.000 so creepy and fascinating about the sculpture. He mentioned something 0:14:32.040 --> 0:14:36.520 about the eyes that seems especially human and emotive. But 0:14:36.960 --> 0:14:39.520 I do have to agree there is something really special 0:14:39.600 --> 0:14:43.920 about this piece of three dimensional paleo art. It is 0:14:44.200 --> 0:14:48.360 at once alien and disturbingly human. I think parts of 0:14:48.400 --> 0:14:52.560 it are hitting Uncanny Valley territory because we're getting sort 0:14:52.560 --> 0:14:57.400 of like a pig, giant pig horse with human eyes energy. 0:14:58.240 --> 0:15:01.640 But also it looks like it's about to tell me something, 0:15:01.720 --> 0:15:04.040 like it's about to tell me a secret, and it's 0:15:04.080 --> 0:15:06.960 a secret I don't want to know, and it's grinning 0:15:07.040 --> 0:15:08.680 because it knows that I don't want to know. 0:15:09.240 --> 0:15:12.640 Oh yeah, I mean, it's definitely looking at me. It's 0:15:12.680 --> 0:15:15.600 definitely looking at me. I feel like, to some degree 0:15:15.720 --> 0:15:19.760 judging me, but judging me fairly, judging like it is 0:15:19.840 --> 0:15:22.760 making a fair assessment of me. And yes, to your point, 0:15:23.000 --> 0:15:25.040 perhaps I don't really want to hear it, but maybe 0:15:25.080 --> 0:15:27.360 I do want to hear it. Maybe what this creature 0:15:27.360 --> 0:15:29.560 has to share with me will bring a lot of 0:15:29.600 --> 0:15:31.160 positive change into my life. 0:15:31.520 --> 0:15:34.120 Oh okay, well I like the open mindedness with which 0:15:34.120 --> 0:15:35.240 you're approaching this creature. 0:15:35.280 --> 0:15:35.480 Yeah. 0:15:35.680 --> 0:15:38.200 Maybe maybe the thing, the secret that is going to 0:15:38.200 --> 0:15:40.920 share is actually great wisdom. It's wisdom you need and 0:15:40.960 --> 0:15:42.680 you just aren't ready to accept. 0:15:43.040 --> 0:15:45.480 But I do not get the sense that it wants 0:15:45.520 --> 0:15:49.240 to eat me. I get the sense that it is 0:15:49.360 --> 0:15:53.040 a bit more benign when it comes to matters of 0:15:53.560 --> 0:15:54.320 the flesh. 0:15:54.640 --> 0:15:58.440 It's really funny to me how much this paleo art image, 0:15:58.440 --> 0:16:01.480 with the you know, the fully concer diructed image, with 0:16:01.560 --> 0:16:05.560 its kind of serene, placid eyes gazing into your mind 0:16:05.640 --> 0:16:07.800 and maybe hypnotizing you maybe you're about to do some 0:16:07.880 --> 0:16:11.800 scanners stuff on you, how much that does not comport 0:16:12.040 --> 0:16:16.320 with the just the fierceness suggested by the bones. 0:16:17.040 --> 0:16:19.440 This is often the case, though, isn't it. I mean 0:16:20.080 --> 0:16:22.720 one of the prime exit I mean, the main prime 0:16:22.720 --> 0:16:25.000 example here would of course be the human skull. You 0:16:25.040 --> 0:16:26.920 get a totally different vibe looking at a human skull, 0:16:26.920 --> 0:16:29.080 looking at a human face. But you know, that's almost 0:16:29.120 --> 0:16:31.240 to be expected because you also have to confront a 0:16:31.280 --> 0:16:33.080 lot about your own mortality. When you look at a 0:16:33.080 --> 0:16:36.000 skull of a human. I think it's more pronounced when 0:16:36.040 --> 0:16:39.480 you see I think that the other readily available example 0:16:39.560 --> 0:16:41.920 is the skull of the horse. Like the horse is 0:16:42.040 --> 0:16:47.000 a domesticated animal that many judge to be you know, 0:16:47.440 --> 0:16:50.520 basically in the same realm as that of the dog 0:16:50.640 --> 0:16:54.520 in terms of human animal relationships. You know, it is 0:16:54.560 --> 0:16:58.640 an animal that is very close to us, and ultimately 0:16:58.680 --> 0:17:00.680 there's a strong case to be made that it's it's 0:17:00.720 --> 0:17:05.480 more essential to the development of human civilization than anything 0:17:05.520 --> 0:17:10.040 any other animal that we've domesticated. But while we look 0:17:10.040 --> 0:17:13.240 at a horse, you know, we tend to see something again, 0:17:13.320 --> 0:17:17.840 more benign, a friend of humanity, something noble and proud, 0:17:18.680 --> 0:17:21.359 beautiful even, But you look at the skull of the 0:17:21.400 --> 0:17:23.840 horse and you get this sense of kind of a 0:17:23.880 --> 0:17:27.680 grinning demon. And people have, you know, had I think, 0:17:27.720 --> 0:17:31.960 similar connections with the skull of the horse for ages, 0:17:32.320 --> 0:17:38.320 you know, often incorporating it into designs of supernatural beings, 0:17:38.440 --> 0:17:40.919 or utilizing the horse skull in some way that is 0:17:41.320 --> 0:17:45.400 you know, magical, perhaps protective magic and so forth. And 0:17:46.160 --> 0:17:48.040 I don't know. I guess maybe it is easy to 0:17:48.440 --> 0:17:52.320 lose sight of that when you're dealing with the skeletal 0:17:52.359 --> 0:17:55.359 remains of a prehistoric organism in which we don't know 0:17:55.440 --> 0:17:58.400 what the fleshed version of the face looked like. Yeah. 0:17:58.480 --> 0:18:01.000 Yeah, And this is a great reminder of something we've 0:18:01.000 --> 0:18:03.959 talked about on the show before about how you know 0:18:04.119 --> 0:18:08.200 paleo art is necessarily to some extent and interpretive enterprise. 0:18:08.560 --> 0:18:10.800 In some cases you have more than just the bones, 0:18:10.840 --> 0:18:13.159 But in a lot of cases you just have fossils, 0:18:13.400 --> 0:18:17.280 maybe not even a complete skeleton. But you know, even 0:18:17.280 --> 0:18:21.000 if you do have a complete near complete fossil skeleton, 0:18:21.359 --> 0:18:24.480 that doesn't necessarily tell you what the soft tissue looked 0:18:24.520 --> 0:18:27.399 like on the outside. So you know, you can have 0:18:27.600 --> 0:18:31.560 ways of informing the guesses made like paleo art can 0:18:31.600 --> 0:18:35.280 be informed by scientific knowledge, but you're still having to 0:18:35.480 --> 0:18:37.760 make some guesses. You're having to make some leaps. 0:18:38.440 --> 0:18:40.960 Didn't we discuss my memories a little foggy on this, 0:18:41.040 --> 0:18:43.960 But didn't we discuss some examples of like intentionally bad 0:18:44.000 --> 0:18:49.600 paleo art reconstructing existing organisms like living organisms. 0:18:50.040 --> 0:18:52.199 I think I recall what you're talking about, and I 0:18:52.200 --> 0:18:55.760 think we were talking about the quote shrink wrapping phenomenon 0:18:55.880 --> 0:18:59.520 where it's like a lot of extinct animals or just 0:18:59.600 --> 0:19:02.840 you take the bones and then you imagine skin tightly 0:19:02.880 --> 0:19:05.520 wrapped around those bones and cutting out a lot of 0:19:05.560 --> 0:19:08.639 the kind of bulk or soft tissue that you actually 0:19:08.640 --> 0:19:11.080 see on some animals. And so yeah, I think the 0:19:11.160 --> 0:19:13.800 idea was taking the skeletons of animals we know today 0:19:13.840 --> 0:19:16.359 and cutting out all of the excess soft tissue and 0:19:16.400 --> 0:19:17.440 just shrink wrapping them. 0:19:17.960 --> 0:19:20.919 Okay, I think that that is what I was thinking of. 0:19:21.040 --> 0:19:23.560 But it's easy to take that idea of the shrink wrapping. 0:19:23.960 --> 0:19:26.800 Look at say a horse skeleton, and then imagine like 0:19:26.840 --> 0:19:31.320 the shrink wrapped paleo art version of an extant horse. 0:19:31.400 --> 0:19:34.679 You know, it would be this nightmare steed, you know. 0:19:35.440 --> 0:19:37.520 And I mean you could apply something similar to humans. 0:19:37.560 --> 0:19:39.560 We would all look like some sort of a ghoule. Right. 0:19:40.000 --> 0:19:42.720 Yeah, Well, anyway, I do want to admit that, you know, 0:19:42.800 --> 0:19:47.200 I don't have enough expertise in the anatomy or physiology 0:19:47.359 --> 0:19:52.520 of these extinct mammals to judge whether the Carnegie the 0:19:52.560 --> 0:19:57.080 Carnegie Museum statue is I don't know is anywhere close 0:19:57.119 --> 0:20:00.360 to right or not, But there is one one thing 0:20:00.400 --> 0:20:02.920 that I thought was interesting about it, which is that 0:20:03.040 --> 0:20:06.520 the overly human eyes do kind of connect to an 0:20:06.560 --> 0:20:09.920 interesting scientific fact about the antilodonts, which is that they 0:20:10.000 --> 0:20:14.240 had more forward facing eye placement than a lot of ardiodactyls, 0:20:14.280 --> 0:20:18.640 which raises questions about their survival strategies. On a lot 0:20:18.680 --> 0:20:22.080 of hoofed mammals, you will see the eyes the eyes 0:20:22.160 --> 0:20:25.760 spread more to the sides, which does that can be helpful, 0:20:25.800 --> 0:20:28.520 especially to prey animals, because it gives them a wider 0:20:28.560 --> 0:20:31.000 field of vision, so it's easier for them to see 0:20:31.000 --> 0:20:34.480 predators approaching. But the more forward shifted gaze of the 0:20:34.520 --> 0:20:38.919 antilodonts suggests some other pressures in play. Oh and just 0:20:39.040 --> 0:20:42.919 quickly for contrast on paleo art for these hellpigs, I 0:20:42.960 --> 0:20:45.240 wanted to attach a couple more images for you to 0:20:45.240 --> 0:20:48.560 look at. They both look pretty interesting. One is one 0:20:48.560 --> 0:20:50.919 I've just seen floating around the Internet sit at a 0:20:50.920 --> 0:20:55.040 few different times. One is I think seemingly associated with 0:20:55.119 --> 0:20:59.080 the Encyclopedia Britannica resources And that one is funny to 0:20:59.119 --> 0:21:02.040 me because it looks like a crocodile horse pig with 0:21:02.280 --> 0:21:04.919 face spikes doing the meme troll face. 0:21:06.400 --> 0:21:09.080 I mean, it's very toothy. It looks like, how is 0:21:09.080 --> 0:21:11.760 this mouth supposed to shut? It kind of implies an 0:21:11.840 --> 0:21:14.240 organism that cannot close its mouth all the way. It 0:21:14.280 --> 0:21:15.479 just has monster jaws. 0:21:15.920 --> 0:21:19.119 Well that's another funny thing. Where so it looks hilarious 0:21:19.119 --> 0:21:21.160 in the picture this way, because it looks like this 0:21:21.200 --> 0:21:24.399 animal is laughing at me, laughing at my misfortune and grief. 0:21:25.280 --> 0:21:29.000 But there is an interesting thing about these the antilidonts, 0:21:29.000 --> 0:21:33.320 which is that they could apparently open their jaws extremely wide. 0:21:34.840 --> 0:21:36.040 Well that makes me feel worse. 0:21:36.359 --> 0:21:48.199 Yeah, So I wanted to come back to the question 0:21:48.440 --> 0:21:52.000 are these animals really pigs? They have been called hell 0:21:52.200 --> 0:21:56.240 pigs in popular media and books and articles, but apparently 0:21:56.320 --> 0:22:02.159 this is probably not exactly accurate. Pigs, swine, and hogs 0:22:02.200 --> 0:22:06.160 are animals that belong to the mammal family Suidy. And 0:22:06.800 --> 0:22:11.760 while the antilodonts do share some morphological features in common 0:22:11.800 --> 0:22:14.760 with pigs, like it's not hard to see with some 0:22:14.880 --> 0:22:17.720 of these remains why someone would look at them and say, oh, 0:22:17.760 --> 0:22:19.639 this is some type of giant pig, Like there are 0:22:19.680 --> 0:22:23.800 pig like things about it, but more recent research has 0:22:23.840 --> 0:22:28.000 shown that pigs are probably not the their closest relatives 0:22:28.000 --> 0:22:31.640 in the ardiodactyl order, and in fact what their closest 0:22:31.640 --> 0:22:34.919 relatives are is maybe even more interesting. So there have 0:22:34.960 --> 0:22:37.080 been findings about this going back for years now. This 0:22:37.160 --> 0:22:40.360 is not like a new discovery, but for an example 0:22:40.359 --> 0:22:45.000 of a more recent paper supporting the division between antilodonts 0:22:45.000 --> 0:22:48.880 and pigs, I came across This paper by Yang Yu, Hongyang, 0:22:48.920 --> 0:22:53.159 Gao Chang Li, and Xijun Ni published in the Journal 0:22:53.160 --> 0:22:56.520 of Systematic Paleontology in twenty twenty three, called a new 0:22:56.560 --> 0:23:01.000 antilodont ardiodactyl Mammalia from the late scene of China and 0:23:01.080 --> 0:23:05.320 its phylogenetic implications. This paper is a report on a 0:23:05.359 --> 0:23:09.200 new genus and species of antilodontidy. This one is known 0:23:09.600 --> 0:23:16.560 as Antilodontellus juliangi and it's and basically they say based 0:23:16.560 --> 0:23:20.760 on finding remnants of the animal's lower jaw and then 0:23:20.840 --> 0:23:26.000 comparing this animal to comparing this newly discovered antilodont to 0:23:26.040 --> 0:23:31.159 other ardiodactyls, the authors conclude that the antilodonts are situated 0:23:31.200 --> 0:23:36.040 within the clade Setancodonto morpha, which means that they are 0:23:36.160 --> 0:23:42.720 quote more closely related to hippopotamus and cetaceans than to suena. 0:23:42.840 --> 0:23:47.000 So the hell pigs are not pigs as we understand 0:23:47.000 --> 0:23:51.479 them today, and are probably more distant cousins of pigs 0:23:51.760 --> 0:23:56.520 and closer cousins of hippos and whales. So you have 0:23:56.640 --> 0:24:00.359