I wrote recently about the huge old snake they found in India, 47 million years past startling anybody. Numerous articles on the subject claimed that, at fifty feet, it was as long as a school bus. Now, I don’t think much of that comparison. I understand that it is only the length they’re referring to, and we’ll assume they don’t mean one of the short buses, but it’s not the right visual. School buses are long but squatty. I get confused thinking about a big square yellow snake. Unfortunately, I can’t come up with anything better than “as long as a 50-foot hose.”
I can imagine fifty feet quite well though, because my garden is 100 feet in either direction. So, half that, or about the length of a mature field bindweed root, or a cherry tree root. Dig up one cherry tree sprout and tug on it, and squint down the line of quivering cherry tree sprouts until the last one snaps off, and there’s your fifty feet.
Right on the heels of the school bus snake, I read about an ancient salamander, Metaposaurus alagarvensis, described as having a head like a coffee table. Once again, it ain’t right. It’s like describing a prehistoric zebu with a back hump like a Louis XIV chiffonier. It’s asking the brain to do too much.
People are always sending me salamanders or things they think are salamanders but aren’t, because I have often professed my admiration for the entire salamander brand. But I admit it: I am a looksist. I like handsome salamanders with Mona Lisa aspects and little noodle arms and fingers and maybe a nice clown outfit. I’m not as wild about proto-salamanders the “size of a small car with hundreds of sharp teeth in its big flat head.” That does not sound refined at all. That just sounds nasty. Basically a rubbery crocodile that ate dinosaurs. Your modern salamander is still a fine little predator but it isn’t showy about it. It’s urbane. And—and this part is important—it’s not going to eat you. And it’s more of a gummer.
So okay. I looked at the reconstruction of the new old salamander with the head like a coffee table with great skepticism, and sure enough, I could sort of visualize a trio of Life magazines fanned out on its head and possibly a wax fruit composition in a glass bowl. It wasn’t the worst description after all.
But Dr. Brusatte, the scientist who thought it “looked like a toilet seat when the jaws snap shut,” has my heart. Damn thing does. It’s just a big old salamander, but if you don’t keep the lid down it’s a terrorist.
When you say people are always sending you salamanders…I assume, pictures of them? Or the real thing?
I just read a news story about a guy in PA who possessed an emotional support alligator, named Wally, an ugly dude bigger than a coffee table but reportedly cuddly. The guy went on vacation to Georgia and took Wally with him. In what may have been a prank, someone called the authorities who trapped Wally and subsequently released him into the wild marshes of Georgia. Now a lot of people are looking for him.
FREE WALLY!
Probably because I live so close to Philly, where Wally and his human lived, I learned about them quite a while ago. The human tried to take him to a Phillies game… but they were not allowed to come in. Apparently, the Human actually slept with Wally on the bed beside him.
I feel sorry for the Human for losing Wally. But I also feel that maybe it is better for both of them. Mixed relationships CAN work out. But human and reptile? I could not be so trusting of another species. Especially one with such big teeth.
Seems to me like a better deal for Wally, really.
But coffee tables come in a wide range of sizes, so how do we know if the salamander is a three magazine size or five stacks of library books plus last night’s takeout leftovers size?
I’d prefer them small anyway. Pocket sized. Small pocket that is, not a giant handbag sized pocket.
I pictured the three-legged triangle with rounded corners type of coffee table. Mid-century.
With the skinny little legs.
I gotta put on my paleontologist hat for this one. Technically Metoposaurus isn’t a salamander, but a temnospondyl. It’s an amphibian and it has a tail, but that’s about as close as it gets to being a salamander. We’re more closely related to squirrels (and bats) than temnospondyls are related to salamanders.
Onward.
No one in my acquaintance has ever likened a metoposaur head to a coffee table. Their heads are always (when equated to furniture) compared to toilet seats. Makes sense. Solid lid, seat with a hole in it, same basic shape.
My guess is that most of the scientists who study metoposaurs and their ilk have toilet seats, but very few of them have coffee tables.
I appreciate your emphasis on *most* of the scientists having toilet seats.
I’m wondering if in future eons the paleontologists will be talking about these hairless mammals about the size of a small sunflower stalk. They used to infest the entire planet and we can find evidence of their communal nests in any upthrust of the oleaginous zone.
The hairless mammal line brings up an issue in reconstructing past life. Unless you have the extreme luck of a fossilization event that either preserves the entire specimen or impressions of it or a genetically close living relative, there’s no reasonable way to extrapolate integument from bones. In this case if the only living genetically close relative was literally ANY primate other than a human the assumption would be a completely hair covered animal. Of course there is another indicator available for humans, artwork or photographs.
Just at the plastics zone.
Salamanders with heads that look like toilet seats? I’m getting so confused. Does that mean that when a salamander couple has a fight, Mrs. Salamander yells at Mr. Salamander and says, “You’re full of crap”?