h2g2 The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy: Earth Edition

There are lots and lots of things I'm unaware of. I'm not going to lose sleep over things that I missed out on learning about by about 250 million years.

Besides, the people who discover fossils don't always get the right skull on the right skeleton -- look at the hash they made of the so-called brontosaurus . So, Therocephalians might have looked different than we think they did, though it's well past time for them to get annoyed at our poor understanding of them.

Hi Paulh! Well actually the therocephalians like many other ancient critters that were found over here have suffered from the 'headhunting' tendency of collectors. In most cases, there is no rest of the skeleton! Once having a nice skull, the collectors often quit. So actually we don't have a real good idea of what the bodies of these things looked like, we have skeletons of just a few, and simply figure the others must have looked similar. The basic therocephalian body plan is rather like a badger: stocky, strong but small limbs, short to very short tail. But there musta been some variation.


Me, I have to try to learn as much of this sort of thing as possible. I want to understand the phenomenon of life...

More power to you!

Good luck!