this post was submitted on 23 Aug 2024
264 points (98.5% liked)

science

14812 readers
97 users here now

A community to post scientific articles, news, and civil discussion.

rule #1: be kind

<--- rules currently under construction, see current pinned post.

2024-11-11

founded 1 year ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
[–] [email protected] 14 points 2 months ago (1 children)

The grooves carved into each point could allow it to slide down the shaft upon impact. A fixed point, by contrast, would be more likely to shatter when it hit dense material, especially bone.

This is really interesting. And to further illustrate just how much we have no idea and might be wildly wrong, there's an incredible book, All Yesterdays, which reimagines prehistoric animals in interesting new ways. The second half of the book shows possible recreations of contemporary animals based solely on their skeletons to really drive home the point at how much guessing is involved in this field. Some of the images can be found here.

This is a rhino skeleton (wtf):

[–] FlyingSquid 13 points 2 months ago (1 children)

We do know a lot more about mammoths though, because they have been found frozen in good condition in Siberia.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Yuka_(mammoth)

[–] [email protected] 5 points 2 months ago

There were some cave lions found several years ago, too. Cubs.