Mammoth life-size replica, St Petersburg museum, 1874. 🐘

The world’s last woolly mammoths, sequestered on an Arctic Ocean island outpost, suffered from serious genetic defects caused by generations o... View MoreMammoth life-size replica, St Petersburg museum, 1874. 🐘

The world’s last woolly mammoths, sequestered on an Arctic Ocean island outpost, suffered from serious genetic defects caused by generations of inbreeding that may have hampered traits such as sense of smell and male fertility in the doomed population.

Most woolly mammoths went extinct roughly 10,000 years ago amid a warming climate and widespread human hunting. But isolated populations survived for thousands of years after that on St. Paul Island in the Bering Sea and Wrangel Island in the Arctic Ocean. The Wrangel Island population was the last, disappearing roughly 4,000 years ago.

The sperm production-related mutations may have reduced fertility in an already shrinking population. The olfactory mutations may have harmed the ability to forage and to even smell the flowers that made up an important part of their diet.

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A newly described species of mosasaur, an extinct marine reptile, swam through Cretaceous seas 80 million years ago and had a slender snout like a crocodile's.

Full-size Mosasaurus hoffmani model 😱

Can you even imagine what this looked like when it was swimming through the oceans?

Mosasaurus ("lizard of the Meuse River") is the type genus of the mosasaurs,... View MoreFull-size Mosasaurus hoffmani model 😱

Can you even imagine what this looked like when it was swimming through the oceans?

Mosasaurus ("lizard of the Meuse River") is the type genus of the mosasaurs, an extinct group of aquatic squamate reptiles. The genus lived about 82 to 66 million years ago during the Campanian and Maastrichtian stages of the Late Cretaceous. The earliest fossils known to science were found as skulls in a chalk quarry near the Dutch city of Maastricht in the late 1700s, which were initially thought to have been the bones of crocodiles or whales. One particular skull discovered sometime around 1780, which was seized during the French Revolutionary Wars for its scientific value and transported to Paris, was famously nicknamed the "great animal of Maastricht". In 1808, naturalist Georges Cuvier concluded that it belonged to a giant marine lizard with similarities to monitor lizards but otherwise unlike any animal known today. This concept was revolutionary at the time and helped support the then-developing ideas of extinction. However, Cuvier did not designate a scientific name for the new animal; this task was completed by William Daniel Conybeare in 1822 when he named it the Mosasaurus in reference to its origin in fossil deposits near the Meuse River.

Traditional interpretations have estimated the maximum length of Mosasaurus to be up to 17.6 meters (58 ft), making it one of the largest mosasaur genera of all time.

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Researchers were surprised to find a dinosaur that was much larger — twice the length and more than five times heavier — than its ecosystem's previously known apex predator: a tyrannosaur. 🦖

Diplodocus

🎨 by Alice B. Woodward, 1905

Woodward was probably the first female paleo-artist.

Styracosaurus 😮

by Daren Horley

Styracosaurus was a genus of herbivorous ceratopsian dinosaur from the Cretaceous Period (Campanian stage), about 75.5 to 75 million years ago. It had four to six lon... View MoreStyracosaurus 😮

by Daren Horley

Styracosaurus was a genus of herbivorous ceratopsian dinosaur from the Cretaceous Period (Campanian stage), about 75.5 to 75 million years ago. It had four to six long parietal spikes extending from its neck frill, a smaller jugal horn on each of its cheeks, and a single horn protruding from its nose, which may have been up to 60 centimeters (2 feet) long and 15 centimeters (6 inches) wide. The function or functions of the horns and frills have been debated for many years.

Styracosaurus was a relatively large dinosaur, reaching lengths of 5.5 meters (18 feet) and weighing nearly 3 tonnes. It stood about 1.8 meters (5.9 feet) tall. Styracosaurus possessed four short legs and a bulky body. Its tail was rather short. The skull had a beak and shearing cheek teeth arranged in continuous dental batteries, suggesting that the animal sliced up plants. Like other ceratopsians, this dinosaur may have been a herd animal, travelling in large groups, as suggested by bone beds.

Named by Lawrence Lambe in 1913, Styracosaurus is a member of the Centrosaurinae.

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The fossilized skull of an elephant-like animal known as a gomphothere was discovered a decade ago by NMSU alumnus Eddie Binns at his quarry near Mesquite. Binns donated the fossil to the university.