Huge mega-rafts carried dinosaur-era animals on round-the-world trips

SMITHSONIAN INSTITUTION/SPL

By Michael Marshall

Monumental floating logs carried communities of animals on round-the-world journeys within the course of the dinosaur technology. The mega-rafts gave marine animals a technique to gallop without passing via deadly low-oxygen zones.

Palaeontologists agree with lengthy known of preserved logs as much as 14 metres lengthy from the Jurassic interval 200-145 million years within the past. The logs are covered in crinoids, an animal connected to starfish – they agree with a central body with many lengthy feathery hands. The logs additionally lift oysters.

Preliminary research within the 1960s suggested that these logs had been floating …