Digging up fossils and petrified bone fragments is no simple task. Neither is piecing them back together like an ancient jigsaw puzzle. And as for making sense of the creature they once belonged to? Talk about talent! That said, it’s easy to assume science is pretty much accurate, right? Wrong! Throughout history, epic fails have plagued researchers attempting to reconstruct prehistoric creatures.
While understandable due to the nature of the work, some of these epic fails are downright hilarious. With that in mind, let’s dive into a few of the biggest mistakes scientists have made trying to piece together the fossil record.
Children are fascinated by picture books and shows with reconstructions of dinosaur-age creatures. And let’s face it, many adults remain interested, too. Think Jurassic Park and Jurassic World . Using fossils that date back millennia can provide a tantalizing window into the past.
Recreations through artwork and models can even give us the sense we’ve traveled back in time. But as with any mystery, piecing together the past isn’t always as easy as you might think. And it comes with the risk of being wrong. Maybe even monumentally wrong .
To be fair, working with fossils comes with inherent issues. Science Alert observes, “Scientists have to rely on fragmentary bones, weathered footprints, impressions in rock—these don’t always capture the fine details of the complex, living breathing animal that passed through or died there.” The world’s first scientists and paleontologists didn’t have today’s technology, either. This made the task of reconstructing long-extinct species especially challenging.
In 2015, scientists announced an incredible find—the first missing link between lizards and snakes. Researchers named it Tetrapodophis amplectus (say that fast three times!). The scientific community feted the find until a new group of paleontologists stepped in, throwing shade on the discovery.
Further examination led to a declaration of the “missing link” as something far less controversial. An extinct lizard known as Dolichosaurus . In other words, it didn’t prove snake enough to build any species bridge.
Another problematic fossil that threw scientists for a loop was the Iguanodon . In the 19th century, several significant fossil discoveries made this extinct animal all the rage. It also led to an outlandish hypothesis about their appearance.
The fossil remains had two spikes, which scientists initially misidentified as horns. Why? Because they based their recreations on living species such as rhinoceros iguanas. But they couldn’t have been more wrong. As it turns out, those little spikes were thumbs.
Few creatures have incited more terror than velociraptors. In Jurassic Park , these menacing, bipedal lizards represented the ultimate killing machines. But if you thought their movie depiction was founded in hard science, think again. Instead, these Cretaceous critters were about the size of today’s domestic turkeys. And to top it off, they had feathers!
Of course, this would have turned a horror flick into Thanksgiving dinner. To keep the movie’s adrenaline-spiking vibe, filmmakers took inspiration from another dino. Known as Deinonychus , this species was much bigger and more lethal by human standards. But its name left something to be desired. As a result, they went with the more fear-inducing glorified gobbler moniker.
Another dino whose revamped depictions continue to make waves is Tyrannosaurus Rex . Once upon a time, scientists had him pegged as a towering, bipedal wall of muscle with teeny, tiny arms. While the arms have remained the same, the rest of the animal has undergone significant changes.
Instead of walking upright, scientists now believe it stood horizontal with its massive tail balancing its head. Kind of like a seesaw. And get ready for another shocker. In youth, T. Rex would have sported feathers like Velociraptors. Whether those feathers persisted into maturity remains up for debate. So does the critter’s size. Some estimates now have individuals at up to 33,000 pounds, almost twice as big as previously thought!
Yep, you read that subtitle right. Once upon a time, scientists thought they had a small sea creature called Hallucigenia all figured out. Fossils revealed it as having “at least seven pairs of rigid spikes on its back, seven pairs of weirdly floppy ‘legs’, and what appeared to be a large, bulbous head at one end.” But boy, were they wrong.
After a whole series of fossils were found without the big, bulgy heads, scientists wondered how they all met the same headless fate. The answer came during closer examination of what scientists thought was the butt end of the animal. It revealed teeth and eyes, leading researchers to a startling realization. They had misidentified the butt as the head. So, what was the prominent “head-like” protrusion? The guts of some of the animals squeezed out as sediment and covered and crushed them.
Today, scientists have more tools available to them for studying fragments from the past. As Smithsonian Magazine notes, “the modern study of extinct animals is being driven by cutting-edge imaging technology, 3D modeling, and virtual reconstruction and dissection—advancing our knowledge of the ancient animals but also of other species old and new.”
These new technologies should help reduce the risk of fossil gaffes like those discussed above. That said, errant hypotheses about some of the world’s oldest animals can be hilarious. They also provide invaluable lessons about the scientific method and the powers of observation.
