Quinkana - Ancient Animal

today on north 02 we are going to be talking about quincana quincano was a terrestrial crocodile with dinosaur-like teeth and it could run much faster than a normal croc it lived in australia and only died out about 40 000 years ago so before we talk about how awesome these animals were we need to talk about their origin and to clear up the confusion this animal is not related to megalania which is a famous reptile from the time and place this animal belongs to the group known as miko sukai and crocodilians they appeared all the way back in the eosteen australia about 50 million years ago evolution allowed this group to take more niches in the environment than just an ambush predator they became more terrestrial by evolving longer legs to chase down prey not all mikosukans were terrestrial but this group was known for dominating islands in the southeast asia south pacific and also australia the first species of the genus quincana appeared in the late oligoscene about 24 million years ago quincano muboldi was the earliest discovered species known from the left maxilla scy's estimates are not well known but it is thought to be two meters long and weigh less than 250 pounds over time the species got larger this gives credence the idea that they became more successful as time went on there are four discovered species of quinchana and as far as we have discovered the two species did not co-exist at least for a long time as you can see by the age range of this species their evolution was quite linear as far as we've discovered like i said earlier each species was larger than the last and by the time it got to quincana for teo astronomy they were huge large estimates say that it could have been 20 feet long the weight was even more of a mystery because most estimates are for smaller species from what i have found for tirostrom could have weighed 450 kg or 990 pounds this isn't an unreasonable weight for a beast that is that long it must have been a deadly predator at that size another thing that made this group so special were their zippo down teeth these teeth were lateral medially compressed recurved and serrated they would have been great at tearing flesh and causing hemorrhage a lot of therapod dinosaurs actually possessed teeth that were very similar even a trained eye could be fooled into thinking that these teeth belong to a dinosaur crocodilians that live in water generally have conical teeth for gripping prey they use these teeth to pull prey underwater and drown them since quincana doesn't have the luxury to drown its prey it must instead try to kill it with its teeth it could have just bit an animal until it died or bite an animal and then let it bleed out from a distance we have no evidence of what this animal hunted but there is a lot of animals in its environment to choose from it could have eaten large birds huge cow-like marsupials and giant relatives of kangaroos if this animal was really 990 pounds or even more it could have definitely killed even the largest animals of its time i have not seen any data or studies on the speed of this animal but it could probably run pretty fast just to look at modern day crocs they can run pretty fast for a short period of time and remember they have really short limbs so in comparison this would definitely be a lot faster and i would probably compare it to about a lion because of the length of the legs still we really have no estimates on how fast this thing could run some people have claimed it would chase its prey over a long distance but i find this very unlikely it is more likely that it would chase its prey down in short ambushes like modern crocs like i said it could run pretty fast i bet but probably it couldn't outrun a pro coptodon it was most likely competing for food with the monstrous megalania megalania is thought to have been around the same size at a thousand pounds i can imagine fighting between these two may have happened quite often if they lived in the same environment personally my bet would be on quincana because of the thicker armor stronger bite and bigger teeth now let's talk about this animal and its connection to the indigenous people of australia the name quincana comes from the word quinn cons from the aboriginal folk tales perhaps this word was from the animal in life and it had stayed with the people all this time if not the ancestors of these people still definitely came across quincana i can't even imagine coming across such a hulking beast normal crocs are pretty scary as is but imagine one that could run faster than you now that is a nightmare and now there's evidence that humans were in australia much earlier than previously thought it was thought that humans arrived in australia about 40 000 years ago but that has been pushed back to at least 65 000 years ago this is so much later than i thought possible but this poses a greater question regarding quincana what made it extinct when connie and most of the other australian megafauna went extinct 40 000 years ago it was thought humans did this because we thought that they got there around that time but with this new evidence it doesn't make much sense anymore humans wouldn't get to a place and then wait 25 000 years just to massacre a whole continent instead this gives credence to the idea that it was a drastic climate change that australia went through around this time so climate change and at least some interference with humans was the cause of the quincano's extinction i say at least some because we really have no idea of how humans played a role in the mega final collapse i hope more comes out about this because it'll be really interesting to see what killed off all these great animals so thanks for watching i hope you guys like learning about a lesser-known animal from our past check out my subreddit in the description below and comment any suggestions for new videos or scientific inaccuracies i may have made in this video i'll see you guys in the next episode of north o2 you

Channel: NORTH 02

Views: 10,402

Rating: 4.9183674 out of 5

Keywords: news, podcast, discovery, paleontology, evolution, bio, primitive, trex, feather, biology, class, video, natural, selection, terrestrial, croc, crocodile, crocodyliformes, crocodylomorpha, prehistoric, ancient, animal, fossil, mya, pliestocene, mega, fauna

Id: MN4QRIpVPUc

Length: 5min 58sec (358 seconds)

Published: Thu Jul 04 2019

Reddit Comments

[u/Crocydylus-niloticus]

I’m a simple man. I see crocodylomorphs, I upvote.

[u/FinkingOutLoud]

Of course it’s fuckin Australia

[u/wiz28ultra]

Dat Skyrim music though

[u/Ivan_Botsky_Trollov]

bet this Quinkana guy ate some human flesh back in the day..yummy