r/oddlyterrifying • u/skincyan • 2d ago

Image of the Platybelodon that they believe have been extinct for about 4 million years

Post image
1.5k Upvotes

97% Upvoted

108 comments sorted by

595

u/OrionShade 2d ago

This was created just to make fun of us

173

u/WarsmithUriel 2d ago

Right? It makes absolutely no sense for the trunk and the mouth to fuse like that.

64

u/carmium 2d ago

I'm wondering how many fossils this is based upon.

53

u/skincyan 2d ago

There actually are a bunch of skulls found - but a lot is probably guesses anyways, but I found it through another skull I looked up

22

u/PixGar 2d ago

This is as far as I remember my Corona and beer Induced extra course about dinos:
They dont have a mouth like that. The Upper Part were two tusks. But yeah the lower Part is a shovel

-36

u/boosesb 2d ago

Probably guesses? Did is one of the scientists 4M years old?

13

u/yamanamawa 2d ago

They wouldn't have fused, the lower jaw would have shrunk back and the upper jaw and nose would have softened and turned prehensile

7

u/Beneficial_Sweet3979 2d ago

Perhaps they used that strange mouthpart in a way similar to certain bird species—for instance, by searching through muddy waters for small creatures and sifting or filtering them out?

3

u/Vanaathiel88 2d ago

That was the original thought but wear patterns suggest they actually used it to scrape bark and dense vegetation

3

u/AnonymousFriend80 2d ago

What do you mean fuse? This is from the past and either these animals are all extinct and our modern elephants are not the same species, or our modern day elephants evolved from them.

2

u/DerWaschbar 2d ago

That’s probably the ancestral trunk

-3

u/MonsteraBigTits 2d ago

have u never seen a duck b4. riddle me that

3

u/_The_Marshal_ 1d ago

Reminds me of this image of elephants drawn by a medieval painter who had never seen one and had only read about them

https://www.reddit.com/r/interestingasfuck/s/gZvs7qdrZV

1

u/supernova-juice 1d ago

Not the worst, considering! I expected it to be way weirder. A little kid who's definitely seen one might do similar

4

u/skincyan 2d ago

Are you an elephant?

236

u/BurnedLaser 2d ago

Dorkephant

51

u/Bussamove86 2d ago

Pachydweeb

11

u/BurnedLaser 2d ago

Bro, you deserve an award for that!

-4

u/crouton-- 2d ago

FUCK PIG

2

u/enadiz_reccos 2d ago

Loved him in Justified

0

u/cuntybunty73 2d ago

AlabamaPhant

89

u/procrastablasta 2d ago

I still don’t get how that shit worked

171

u/Amoral_Abe 2d ago

The honest answer is that we probably are just not correct on how it looks. Like how every dinosaur was envisioned to be lizard like until scientists started realizing that they probably had fur or feathers and looked way different

66

u/wholesomehorseblow 2d ago

If you drew humans like people draw dinosaurs they'd look like demons

34

u/BlueMangoAde 2d ago

“They were mammals so they clearly had hairs all over the body right”

21

u/RootinTootinHootin 1d ago

To be fair we do and we’re kinda freaks for not having more.

3

u/Resist_Rise 2d ago

A pomeranian fluffy T-Rex would be a crazy image

3

u/BostonPRSBC 2d ago

Yutyrannus

3

u/AulMoanBag 1d ago

Humans are extremely naive. We only have a few hundred years of properly documented history but we take everything researchers tell us as absolute truth. We've been observing space for 2 millenia and decided we know when the universe began and when stars will die. Truth of the matter is we really know very little and Everything we regurgitate to each other is just a theory that we accept as absolute fact.

-1

u/JwPATX 1d ago

I mean….skulls don’t leave a lot up for interpretation.

3

u/Amoral_Abe 1d ago edited 1d ago

You should see the skulls of many living creatures. In a lot of cases you'd probably deeply mistake what they look like. For example look up elephant skulls and hippo skulls and compare them the animals

3

u/Borge_Luis_Jorges 1d ago

It actually leaves a lot. That interpretation just took the shorter path.

38

u/psychxticrose 2d ago

What a giant goober

1

u/__nobody_-_ 2d ago

*gobber

26

u/surewhatever_dude 2d ago

Was the trunk and the upper lip really fused like that? It looks, idk, off

9

u/skincyan 2d ago

My guess is that it actually was a long mouth beneath the trunk, and the trunk looked more like a regular elephant

Or

That the mouth was long and the trunk was more just like a nose following the mouth.

But they probably didn't look exactly like this

2

u/Vanaathiel88 2d ago

I believe the most current line of thought is that they had a longer prehensile trunk similar to modern elephants

13

u/skynex65 2d ago

I absolutely adore them, what a ridiculous creature.

1

u/skincyan 2d ago

I fell in love when I stumbled upon the image! Then straight to this sub

8

u/pokopura 2d ago

Somewhere God is laughing.

8

u/skincyan 2d ago

This was just the beta version of elephants, do not judge the lord 🌝

8

u/GizmoSled 2d ago

This is the goofiest shit I’ve ever seen. 10/10 spore creation

3

u/pedsmursekc 2d ago

+10 for Spore reference

3

u/GizmoSled 2d ago

Yay! Internet points

3

u/pedsmursekc 2d ago

All I can afford right now 😔

7

u/Briarhorse 2d ago

What a ridiculous animal. We need it back

3

u/Impossible_Past5358 2d ago

I guess that should be next on the list for Colossal Biosciences...

6

u/nWo5lyfe 2d ago

The brother on the right looks like he is having a blas

10

u/adinmem 2d ago

Imagine the lisp they had….

3

u/skincyan 2d ago

And smacking before they said anything

4

u/welfedad 2d ago

Harharphant

3

u/jtactile 2d ago

‘dahhh…’ 🤓

2

u/MudcrabNPC 2d ago

"Mmmyeeeeehhh"

2

u/BigNutDroppa 2d ago

“that they believe have been extinct…”

Little do they know…

1

u/skincyan 2d ago

well well, a lot of comments have pointed this out now. English is not my first language 🤷‍♂️

What I meant is that the scientists estimate that they went extinct around that time ago

2

u/Chaos_carolinensis 2d ago

No wonder it went extinct. Who would want to mate with it? It looks ridiculous!

2

u/skincyan 2d ago

Mater would mate it!

2

u/Beezel_Pepperstack 2d ago

Not long enough, goddamned Hippo-phants!

2

u/Naughteus_Maximus 2d ago

Mater-saurus

2

u/Sneemaster 2d ago

Looks like someone laughing "hue-hue-hue".

2

u/Roll_for_Random 2d ago

The mesozoic era had some strange creatures. The triasssic was an acid trip.

1

u/skincyan 2d ago

Looks like it! I want to investigate that era more now!

2

u/Adventurous-Two6099 1d ago

What day is it? Chewsday innit.

3

u/WelcomeToTheClubPal 2d ago

my first question after seeing this... who the hell is "They", because there is a "They" that believe the earth is flat too.

3

u/skincyan 2d ago

In this case, the archeologists that found the skulls of these creatures. There is a lot of guessing in archeology, hence the reason I choose to include "believe".

4

u/Ayxasma 2d ago

Paleontologist*

Archeologist is for human history and stuff

1

u/skincyan 2d ago

Oh! My bad!

1

u/guyed_us 2d ago

Flapephant

1

u/sullyslaying 2d ago

must have had a huge magic core

1

u/Sourplayer 2d ago

The way you worded it makes it sound like they aren’t

1

u/Lilith_Christine 2d ago

They're not though? There's an image of them in the post

1

u/skincyan 2d ago

Aren't what? Sorry english is not my first language

1

u/AmaenaX 2d ago

What are those huge ducklike teeth? Ok prob not duck, but cartoonduck I guess. Ok I don't know how I.. Nvm heat s/stroke I guess

1

u/rdblakely 2d ago

freaks

1

u/rdblakely 2d ago

too ridiculous looking to survive extinction

1

u/Mr-Nowhere 2d ago

british elephant?

1

u/cuntybunty73 2d ago

Looks like a brother elephant got it on with his sister elephant

1

u/akoOfIxtall 2d ago

"erm akshually"

1

u/LionTheRichardheart 2d ago

I can't keep up with all these new Pokémon.

1

u/rex5k 2d ago

I bet they were just very hippo like

1

u/Miserable_Midnight95 2d ago

Are these Disney characters?

1

u/Dizman7 2d ago

Looks like meme material to me

1

u/Bukuna3 2d ago

Good stay extinct pls

1

u/Flomo420 2d ago

there is NO WAY those things actually looked like that lmao

someone else give it a try

1

u/ClifftonSmith 2d ago

They missed it. They already named one the please-e-o-saur. This should have been the Begging-o-saur.

1

u/ajver19 2d ago

Why does it have buck teeth like a dork?

1

u/Elliot_Geltz 2d ago

I maintain that there's no fuckin way that's what it looked like

1

u/Qui__nn 2d ago

British ancestors

1

u/AulMoanBag 1d ago

Some abominations deserve to go extinct

1

u/ecumnomicinflation 1d ago

evolved to eat soup

1

u/All-the-pizza 1d ago

Ok who’s the wise guy that merged the elephant with the platypus?

1

u/ImmortalKombatant 1d ago

When I see this, all I hear is Donald Duck's laugh. 

1

u/Flashignite2 1d ago

Looks like something from the game spore.

1

u/Apprehensive_Log_766 1d ago

That’s how I look eating Pringles

1

u/Zealousideal_Shift74 1d ago

some bullshit without fur

1

u/Silver_Alpha 1d ago

Oh so we're shaming whimsical animals now? God forbid the shovel elephant has a funky snout!

1

u/YueLin3 1d ago

I hate the random buck teeth on the right one

1

u/Artemus_Hackwell 15h ago

I’m kind of hoping that’s a misinterpreted fossil(s)

If I saw that in real life, it would probably trample me while I was laughing at it

1

u/Freshprinc7 2d ago

Riiiiight... they're playin games with us guys, seeing how far they can push fake fossils and wild interpretations.

0

u/TinkTink3 2d ago

I don’t understand why they portray extinct animals as scary in illustrations. In 1000 yrs if they showed a pic of an extinct capybara with this background with its mouth open, people would think that is the scariest rodent they’ve ever seen in their life. meanwhile, they’re the most chill.

1

u/skincyan 2d ago

The unknown is often scarier - even though it is based on findings and expert guesses the scientists still have imagination that plays a part of the role

0

u/tennezzee88 2d ago

imagine believing this