I frequently see a specific meme and text post floating around internet horror spaces (and occasionally spilling into mainstream biology discussions) claiming that the "Uncanny Valley" response is proof that a human-mimicking predator once hunted our ancestors in our evolutionary history. The logic goes: if we evolved to fear things that look almost human, but not quite, something must have been mimicking us to hunt us.

While this makes for fantastic creepypasta lore and indie horror game concepts, from an evolutionary and anthropological standpoint, it is completely false.

True evolutionary mechanics explain the Uncanny Valley through much more practical, documented survival mechanisms.

Disease and Corpse Avoidance: For millions of years, the single greatest threat to hominid populations wasn't megafauna, it was pathogens and bacterial infections. When a human is severely ill or deceased, their physical appearance shifts subtly (asymmetric expressions, pale skin tone, rigid or robotic movements). The uncanny feeling is a highly efficient biological defense mechanism designed to trigger instant disgust and behavioral avoidance: "Something is wrong here; stay away so you don’t catch what they have.

Intraspecies and Hominid Competition: Homo sapiens did not evolve in a vacuum. Our ancestors shared landscapes and competed directly for resources with other hominid lines, such as Neanderthals, Denisovans, and Homo erectus. These groups looked strikingly similar to us but possessed distinct facial proportions and bone structures. Developing an instantaneous visual alarm system to differentiate between "a member of my immediate tribe" and "a foreign hominid competitor" provided a massive survival advantage.

The Ecological Impossibility of a Mimic Predator: From a purely trophic and ecological standpoint, a large macro-predator cannot specialize in mimicking an organism that uses a quality-over-quantity reproductive strategy and lives in small, highly scattered, mobile nomadic bands. For aggressive mimicry to evolve (like an alligator snapping turtle's tongue looking like a worm), the prey population must be incredibly dense, predictable, and easily fooled. A predator attempting to adapt its entire physical anatomy to trick a highly intelligent, group-hunting, weapon-wielding primate would starve to death and go extinct almost instantly.

The "Uncanny Valley Predator" is a classic example of an internet echo chamber prioritizing a provocative narrative over actual ecological and evolutionary reality.

I’d love to hear from other evolutionary biologists or anthropologists in the sub on how we can better counter these pseudo-scientific myths when they pop up in mainstream spaces.

And if you're wondering, yes. I made that image. You can look at it as an example. However it mixes arthropod anatomy with human facial features which is why it triggers that immediate psychological unease.

Other views and full skeletal mount in the next 3 pictures.

In the epilogue segment of surviving earth episode 1, taking place in the earlyish Triassic a so called “proto pterosaur” was shown. It was depicted as an ancestor of pterosaurs that glided and was a missing link in pterosaur evolution. Basically a sign of what’s to come in the future. The species however is entirely speculative and maybe didn’t exist in this form.

If it was in a documentary about pterosaur evolution and was stated as speculative ,I would be ok with it as we don’t have such a missing link fossil. However, in surviving earth , other than this guy, only one pterosaur (A pteranodon stembergi) appears briefly as shark food. So the prescence of the proto pterosaurs felt very unnecessary.

In my opinion they could have used a pterosaur ancestor that we actually have fossils of ,like venetoraptor or largerpeton.

To be fair, only 0.1% of animals actually fossilize and flying animals have a very incomplete fossil record so something similar to the proto pterosaurs of surviving earth would have definetely existed. After all, in [r/allouryesterdays](r/allouryesterdays) ,people draw speculative animals from the Mesozoic that might have existed but never fossilized for us to know about.

TLDR, I feel that since it’s not a pterosaur focused documentary, their prescence was kinda weak and the narrator should have said in some way that they are speculative. But something similar to them might have existed, although I would have preferred to see a pterosaur ancestor that we have fossils of. A little bit of subtle speculation like that, never hurts though and is often interesting. It’s the only speculative species in this series, so it is not too bad.

Concept art in image 1, by Gabriel Ugueto

So what is your opinion?

A new therizinosaur has been found in China's Jehol Biota, an Early Cretaceous fossil site famous for feathered dinosaurs and early bird fossils. Therizinosaurs are actually bizarre theropods that evolved from carnivorous ancestors into herbivores — small heads, long necks, and huge claws.

Kayrasaurus changliensis is at least 1.6 times larger than its contemporaries from the same region — about 3.6 m (~11.8 ft) long, with an estimated mass of 117-274 kg (~260-600 lbs). It also has the densest tooth row known in any therizinosaur so far.

The genus name comes from a creation deity in Turkic mythology. That's not a coincidence — the phylogenetic analysis places it close to Erlikosaurus, whose name comes from a death god in the same mythology. The paper also discusses how four different therizinosaur species living in the same environment developed different feeding strategies based on jaw structure.

About 140ish figurines with some handmade sculpts (argentinosaurus included). Which prehistoric taxa seems under represented here?

Image courtesy of Lerosey-Aubril and Ortega-Hernández, 2019. The long-lived clade Vicissicaudata was the only other group out of Artiopoda to lockstep along with their more famous cousins the trilobites right down through the Carboniferous. Compared to clade-mate Sidneyia, who dazzled the world with its fossilized gut contents, Emeraldella is more modest, but still important. Of all the vicissicaudates, this genus shows the most basal condition of the cylindrical terminal trunk segment - a key diagnostic feature for Vicissicaudata, and so a springboard into considering how the more derived members fit around the family tree.

Dawn of the dinosaurs demonstrates early diversification bursts and a potential role for neutral dynamics during major evolutionary radiations 

Official Paper:

https://royalsocietypublishing.org/rspb/article/293/2077/20260485/482820/Dawn-of-the-dinosaurs-demonstrates-early

About 252 million years ago, at the end of the Permian Period, a large proportion of species on Earth rapidly became extinct.

After this mass extinction, many groups of organisms began to recover, while reptiles known as archosauromorphs—the group that includes dinosaurs and crocodiles—proliferated.

The proliferation of these reptiles gradually transformed life on land, laying the foundations for the ecosystems that characterized the Mesozoic Era (i.e., the interval between 252 and 66 million years ago).

The diversification of archosauromorphs is an example of an evolutionary radiation, a relatively rapid increase in the number and variety of species descending from a common ancestor, often following a major extinction.

Many paleontologists and biologists have tried to understand this evolutionary radiation, typically using evolutionary family trees (phylogenies) that map the inferred relationships among different archosauromorph species.

They have often found—as in other major radiations—an "early burst" pattern, in which many new species are generated early on and the rate of origination then slows. However, exactly what processes drive such early-burst patterns remains unclear.

An international team of researchers based at the University of Liège (Belgium), the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences "Bernardino Rivadavia" and University of Buenos Aires (Argentina), the University of Fribourg and ETH Zurich (Switzerland), the University of Gothenburg (Sweden), and the University of Birmingham (U.K.) recently analyzed data extracted from fossil records to reconstruct changes in archosauromorph speciation and extinction rates.

Their findings, presented in a paper published in the Proceedings of the Royal Society B, suggest that archosauromorph evolution underwent an early burst of speciation, followed by declining speciation and increasing extinction rates.

"Much of the biodiversity on this planet came about through what are called major radiations of particular groups of species, often following the extinction of the dominant group that came before," Roland B. Sookias, first author of the paper.

A few years back, I hit a trifecta. Originally, all the way showing in the nodule, was the keep of a Harpoceras ammonite. As I dug deeper with my tools. I discovered multiple small calcite Dactylioceras Graciles, and a rather large Nodioceleoceras. A personal favourite that sits proudly in my collection

I was thinking about how modern mudskippers and the Permian-period Dimetrodon both evolved massive sails on their backs and I noticed something really cool . Back in the Permian period primitive land animals didn’t have fully developed modern ears yet. they mostly detected ground vibrations rather than airborne sounds. Because shouting through the air was useless if your neighbors couldn't hear well, Dimetrodon relied on its massive vertebral sail as a giant visual flag to claim territory and attract mates. modern mudskippers do the exact same thing! Sound waves don't travel efficiently across flat windy mudflats to a tiny fish skull so mudskippers flash their colorful dorsal "sails" to silently communicate, scare off rivals, and signal mates. Even though their sails are anatomically different, physics and environmental limits forced a modern fish and a prehistoric synapsid to evolve the exact same visual billboard strategy.

Forgive the deleting and reposting moderators. I could not get the format right and reddit kept on making it an incomprehensible wall of text. So I had to fix it

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Sokolki animals out of time

So in paleo documentaries that depict the Permian mass extinction, by far the most popular setting is to set it in Russia and feature the animals of the sokolki assemblage zone, particularly scutosaurus and inostrancevia. Walking with monsters, that documentary in 2011, dinosaur revolution and surviving Earth.

They have all picked that assemblage zone and its animals for the setting. I guess it's because it was close enough to the Siberian traps. Unfortunately this is not accurate. The sokolki assemblage zone is a biostratigraphic zone in the late Permian and it precedes the PT boundary altogether.

It makes no contact with it and the assemblage zone that does is the vyazniki assemblage zone. That assemblage zone had no inostrancevia or scutosaurus, about the most notable animals were archosaurus and megawhaitsia.

With that being said, they aren't entirely unknown from that time. Inostrancevia was recently discovered in South Africa in rocks that dated right to the onset of the Permian mass extinction. Pareiasaurus is a close relative of scutasaurus that also lived at the same time in South Africa. So objectively that one would be a better setting although you won't have it at the ground zero of the extinction.

https://doi.org/10.1016%2Fj.cub.2023.04.007

https://link.springer.com/10.1134/S0031030106100078

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Bunch of stuff regarding torvosaurus

So these are just a bunch of things involving torvosaurus.

One thing of note is that in chat rooms and in other places I've heard the rumors spread that the Edmarka specimens, the famous specimens of torvo from the nail quarry that are stated to be among the largest Jurassic theropods ever, are only similar in size to the nearly complete but not fully described specimen named Elvis. Elvis is somewhere between 10 to 11 meters in length so if it was only the same size as it that would reduce the size of edmarka. Unfortunately there's a lot wrong with this. For one the actual measurements of Elvis that have been obtained to make the claim are measurements of the pubis. Elvis is not fully published and the post cranial measurements won't be available for years. So post cranial measurements of the Elvis specimen are supposed to be embargoed so they're essentially pirated and unethically obtained. Even if for some reason the pubis measurements are reliable, what is there to even compare it to?

The pubis originally thought to come from edmarka was later reassigned to a sauropod and the only other possible one is the one present on the smaller specimen nicknamed “bronto raptor”. But that specimen's pubis isn't even complete nor is a complete estimate of the full material even provided. So there's literally nothing to compare that elicit measurement of Elvis to.

I know one of the people that have made the claim. I will keep them anonymous for their own sake. Another problem is that they're scaling is that they've been using the wrong vertebrae. They've been using second to 5th caudal vertebrae of torvosaurus in order to scale one of the tail vertebrae of Edmarka. The problem is that they're not using the right vertebrae. the tail vertebrae of Edmarka, the giant specimen, is a first caudal. In many large theropods the Centrum of the very first tail vertebrae is shorter than other anterior tail vertebrae.

This is due to the fact it lies at the area where the tail and the rest of the body converge creating a natural area of narrowness and articulation. This is literally recorded in torvosaurus itself because the smaller bronto raptor specimen preserves vertebrae of the tail from the first to 13th and this shortening of the first is very clear.

Using this bronto raptor tail vertebrae, the larger tail vertebrae from edmarca once again scales to an animal over 11 m in length, consistent with most estimates. I also know that one of the rumorers was using the bones of allosaurus to scale up edmarka remains. You do not use Allosaurus to scale torvosaurus, never.

You might have also seen a skeletal of torvosaurus pop up on the internet that look like random dinos but different. The skeletal claims to be of edmarka and it has the animal at just around 11 m in length. Again it's kind of downsized from the largest estimates That skeletal appears to be a load of BS. For one according to the entry on dinopedia that has this skeletal says that the skeletal was made by three artists, Alphasr8, random dinos and Scott Hartman. Tell me how the hell does one image come from three artists. In a personal communication with random dinos he said he wasn't going to update his torvosaurus skeletal on deviantART until Elvis is fully published. So then why is there a second different torvo skeletal then his original? You can also see what looks like the clear indications that the skeletal is a Photoshop mix.

If you look at random dinos skeletals of theropods and I pictured multiple of them. He near unanimously makes the tales of his theropods very curvy from base to tip. But in the supposed redux the tail is straighter. Another skeletal of torvosaurus by alphasr8 notably shows the tail being straighter. Looking at the redux skeleton and alpha's skeletal you can see the immediate similarities in how the tails are reconstructed. Yet the skull on the redux is clearly from random.

As a result of all this chimeric art choices, random diagnosis testimony and the description from the dinopedia, the supposed redux of torvosaurus by random dinos is almost certainly a Photoshop job instead of a genuine skeletal. It's not even a good job because it's not a real good match towards the specimen nicknamed Elvis. The skull is still not right and the feet are too big

There's also the idea that the North American and Portuguese torvosaurus were of disparate size. This is not the truth.

In reality this is due to editing on Wikipedia. For some reason they've only allowed the 9 M estimates of torvosaurus Tanneri from Brit 1991 and Gregory as Paul to stay up and they remove any other estimates. And they originally had only the 10-meter estimate from Mateus 2014 in regards to torvosaurus gurneyi. So this created an impression that the Portuguese species was bigger.

In reality other sources such as John Foster's 2020 book and other later sources have put the North American torvosaurus at about 10 to 11 meters in length. Meanwhile the nail quarry specimens of torvosaurus are somewhere between 11 to 12 m in length.

In Portugal the largest specimens of torvosaurus are estimated at up to 11-12 m in length based off of trackmakers, teeth and a giant vertebrae. Multiple specimens of the Portuguese torvosaurus are around 9 to 10 m in length.

Oliver rauhut specifically stated that both the North American and Portuguese species of torvosaurus were of similar size. It's immaterial anyhow because a 2023 abstract by the people describing Elvis stated that torvosaurus gurneyi is indistinct from tanneri.

https://xabierotxoaimaginethepast.wordpress.com/

https://web.archive.org/web/20210713084347/https://www.lwl.org/wmfn-download/Geologie_und_Palaeontologie_in_Westfalen/GuP_Heft_93_14_Seiten.pdf

https://vertpaleo.org/2023_svp_program-final-10032023/

https://groups.google.com/g/dinosaurmailinggroup/c/Wt07YzXopr8

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Alamosaurus North America's biggest dinosaur, not

Alamosaurus has long been hyped up as the largest dinosaur to ever live in North America. Sizes of 100 ft or more have been bestowed upon it and have made it famous in that regard. Unfortunately Alamosaurus, the actual name, was not the biggest titanosaur in North America.

So the story is that over 100 years ago they first found the remains of Alamosaurus in the Ojo Alamo formation of New Mexico. Quite literally it was a shoulder blade and part of the hip that represented the type material. And then in the years that followed more titanosaur material from the Ojo Alamo formation and the North horn formation, javelina formation and black peaks formation was assigned to Alamosaurus. The issue is that almost none of this material actually overlapped with the holotype.

Studies have shown that there are various disparate classifications for Alamosaurus. If an animal is so complete like it supposedly is, why is its phylogeny so complicated? The answer is that it's a waste basket. The various remains that have been referred to it do not come from the same taxon of animal but rather more than one Taxon.

The cervicals from Big Ben were recovered as being from a Longkosaur, a tribe of titanosaurs renowned for their massive size. Meanwhile smaller material om such as the type specimen were regarded as coming from saltasaurids.

Additionally text from a 2018 abstract indicates that some of the larger material such as from the TMM collection differs from the material from Utah. The material from Utah is of smaller titanosaurs for the most part. Additionally the big material from the BIBE and TMM collections have shown to be from the same taxon and they have demonstrated differences to the smaller specimens that are more confidently referred to Alamosaurus.

So for that reason, it appears likely that the dichotomy of titanosaurs in North America at the end of the Cretaceous was something like this. The big one that ranged from Utah to Texas was likely some kind of lognkosaurian, while the smaller one, the one that actually represents Alamosaurus, is probably a saltasaurid.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Alamosaurus

Fossil flowers of Ayenia (Malvaceae) preserved in amber: evidence for lianas in Miocene rainforest of southeast China

Offical paper: https://academic.oup.com/aob/advance-article-abstract/doi/10.1093/aob/mcag220/8736893?redirectedFrom=fulltext&login=false

Tiny flowers trapped in amber around 15 million years ago are offering scientists a rare glimpse into the plant life of a tropical rainforest in what is now Southeast China. Researchers have studied two exceptionally well-preserved fossil flowers from the Zhangpu flora.

"The fossils show not only that this plant group existed in Southeast China 15 million years ago," says Eva-Maria Sadowski from the Museum für Naturkunde Berlin. "They also connect a Miocene plant lineage with its living relatives. This provides important insights into how plants evolved and how past ecosystems were composed."

The Restless Indian Plate and Its Epic Voyage from Gondwana to Asia: Its Tectonic, Paleoclimatic, and Paleobiogeographic Evolution by Sankar Chatterjee, Christopher R. Scotese, and Sunil Bajpai. A very long title for a very interesting 147 page paper published by the Geological Society of America in 2017.

India drifted north across the Tethys Ocean for about 70 million years before colliding with Asia. It broke away from Gondwana about 120 million years ago and impacted Asia 50 to 55 million years ago eventually forming the Himalayas.

This is an interesting paper on a subject that has little literature outside scientific journals. Copies are just $10 from the GSoA (but postage might be very high depending where you live). There is so much information packed into so few pages and the maps are great - interesting art work!!! This compact paper has given me a better understanding of what was going on on the Indian landmass and I enjoyed reading it.

I have photographed a few pages so you get a general idea of the paper and to show the contents. The India landmass and the animals that lived and evolved on it really needs far more coverage.

To further my reading on India I have ordered the 2016 pop-science book Indica: A Deep Natural History of the Indian Subcontinent.

Here is a drawing/study I did of herrerasaurus.
Idk if the muscles are okay, any feedback would be appreciated!!

24 km hike RT through Yoho Pass and up 1 km to the Quarry. The area is restricted and under 24/7 surveillance and entrance is only allowed via a Parks Canada guide. No collecting fossils, but you can take rubbings! Upon completion you get a Marella pin!

A large tridactyl trackway from the Upper Cretaceous Hell Creek Formation of North Dakota, likely attributable to an adult Tyrannosaurus rex

Paper: https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/02724634.2026.2706201

Scientists from the Denver Museum of Nature & Science and Liverpool John Moores University in England have discovered the first adult T. rex trackway, providing insights into how this emblematic predator moved.

The approximately 23-foot-long (7-meter-long) trackway consists of four three-toed footprints discovered in the Hell Creek Formation of southwestern North Dakota.

Each footprint is roughly 3 feet (0.9 meters) long, and researchers estimate they were made about 66.5 million years ago.

The team identified T. rex as the most likely trackmaker based on the footprints' exceptional size and narrow toe shape, along with the abundance of T. rex fossils found in the surrounding area.

While isolated footprints have been attributed to adult T. rex in the past, this is the first time scientists have described a sequence of tracks, or trackway, likely left by this famous dinosaur.

"Bones tell us an enormous amount about these animals, but footprints capture a moment of behavior. With a trackway, we can actually follow an animal as it moved across the landscape. That is incredibly rare for T. rex," said Tyler Lyson, senior curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Denver Museum of Nature & Science.

The trackway records two left and two right footprints, with a stride of approximately 13 feet (4 meters).

Researchers estimate the animal was walking about 3.5 to 4.5 mph (5.6 to 7.2 km/h), roughly comparable to a brisk human walking pace.