0:03 Prehistoric Ocean wasn't just dangerous.
0:05 It was a liquid horror show where
0:07 nightmare creatures with giant eyes
0:10 stalked through eternal darkness. And
0:12 some of these monsters are still alive
0:14 today, lurking in places we've barely
0:17 explored. Look, we think the ocean today
0:19 is scary, which fair enough. It's got
0:21 great whites and giant squids and
0:23 whatever else is down there that we
0:24 haven't found yet. But prehistoric
0:27 oceans, those were on a whole different
0:29 level of nope. Picture this. You're in
0:32 water so deep that sunlight gave up
0:33 trying to reach you about half a mile
0:35 ago. The pressure would crush you
0:38 instantly. The temperature is just above
0:41 freezing. And in this pitch black bone
0:43 crushing void, things were living. And
0:45 not just living, they were thriving,
0:48 getting weird, getting big, and getting
0:50 really, really good at killing stuff.
0:52 See, back then, the deep ocean was where
0:55 evolution went completely off the rails.
0:57 No sunlight meant no plants, so
0:58 everything down there had to get
1:01 creative about dinner. Some grew massive
1:04 eyes to catch the tiniest hint of light.
1:05 Others just said, "Screw it." and went
1:08 blind altogether. A few decided to even
1:09 make their own light and wave it around
1:11 like some kind of underwater serial
1:13 killer with a flashlight. And the really
1:15 messed up part, these weren't just
1:17 random monsters that showed up for a few
1:19 million years and then died out. In
1:21 fact, they were already ancient when
1:23 dinosaurs were still figuring out how to
1:25 walk upright. And here's what really
1:27 gets me. We only know about the ones
1:30 that left fossils. Most deep sea
1:32 creatures just dissolve when they die.
1:34 Their shells get eaten by acid and they
1:37 vanish without a trace. So for every
1:39 horrifying prehistoric sea monster that
1:41 we've found, there's probably a dozen
1:43 worse ones that we'll never even know
1:45 existed. Like imagine there are 12
1:48 creatures out there even more terrifying
1:50 than the megalodon. The deep ocean back
1:52 then was essentially a horror movie that
1:54 ran for 500 million years. Starring
1:56 creatures that would make HP Lovecraft
1:58 throw up. Giant eyes staring through
2:00 eternal darkness. Teeth that don't fit
2:03 in mouths. Things that haven't changed
2:04 their murder strategy since before your
2:07 great great times a million grandmother
2:09 was even a twinkle in some primordial
2:12 soup. Meet the Opthalmosaurus. This
2:14 thing lived 150 million years ago and
2:17 had eyes the size of dinner plates. Not
2:19 small dinner plates either. We're
2:21 talking full-sized fancy restaurant
2:23 dinner plates. Each eyeball was 9 in
2:25 across, which is bigger than most
2:27 basketballs. Now, you might be thinking,
2:30 "Oh, big eyes. So what?" Well, those
2:32 massive eyes weren't just for looking
2:34 pretty. They were for seeing in complete
2:36 darkness while diving deeper than most
2:38 nuclear submarines go today. This
2:40 reptile could hold its breath for over
2:43 20 minutes and dive over 3,000 ft down
2:45 into water so dark you couldn't see your
2:47 hand in front of your face. Why would
2:49 anything want to do that though? Well,
2:51 simple. Dinner was down there. The
2:53 weirdest part is how good it was at this
2:55 job. While other marine reptiles were
2:57 splashing around in shallow water eating
2:59 fish, Opthalmosaurus was down there in
3:02 the void, using those massive eyes to
3:03 spot the faintest glimmer of
3:05 bioluminescence. Picture something
3:07 bigger than a dolphin, but built like a
3:10 torpedo with eyes so big they had to be
3:12 reinforced with rings of bone just so
3:13 they wouldn't collapse under the
3:15 pressure. And it wasn't even the only
3:17 one doing this. We found these things
3:19 all over Europe. So apparently diving
3:21 into the abyss to hunt tentacled
3:23 monsters was a popular career choice
3:24 back then, which tells you something
3:26 about how messed up the Jurassic oceans
3:28 really were. But what if you didn't even
3:30 need massive eyes to be a nightmare?
3:33 Phosphorus was only 12 ft long. In the
3:35 world of prehistoric sea monsters, bats
3:37 basically a minnow. But here's the thing
3:39 about this particular minnow. It had
3:41 forward- facing eyes. You know what else
3:44 has forward- facing eyes? Owls, hawks,
3:45 things that hunt and kill other things
3:48 for a living. Most reptiles have eyes on
3:49 the sides of their heads because they
3:51 spend their time trying not to get
3:54 eaten. Phosphosaurus. This guy had both
3:56 eyes pointing straight ahead, giving it
3:58 depth perception that would make a
4:00 sniper jealous. And those eyes were
4:03 huge. Not Opthalmosaurus huge, but big
4:04 enough that they probably took up half
4:06 its skull. So, I just think this little
4:08 monster was nocturnal. While all the big
4:10 scary mosasaurs were sleeping off their
4:12 day of terrorizing everything in sight,
4:15 Phosphosaurus was just getting started.
4:17 It would cruise through the dark waters
4:19 using those precision guided eyes to
4:21 pick off glowing lantern fish and squid
4:23 that thought they were safe in the
4:25 night. The really twisted part is how
4:27 good it was at this job. We're talking
4:28 about a reptile that figured out how to
4:31 be an underwater owl 70 million years
4:33 before actual owls even existed. It
4:35 wasn't fast enough to chase down big
4:37 prey in broad daylight. So, it just
4:39 waited until dark and became the ocean's
4:41 first serial killer. And get this, it
4:43 lived in Japan. So, while T-Rex was
4:45 stomping around on land, the waters of
4:47 prehistoric Japan were being stalked by
4:50 this small, precise killer with giant
4:52 forward- facing eyes, just cruising
4:53 through the darkness, picking off
4:56 anything dumb enough to light itself up.
4:58 Talk about evolutionary specialization.
5:01 Most mosaurs were built like buses. This
5:03 one was built like a scalpel. And of
5:05 course, some deep sea killers took a
5:07 more direct approach. Viper fish have
5:09 teeth so long they stick out of their
5:11 mouth even when it's closed. These
5:13 aren't normal teeth. These are straight
5:16 up fangs that curve back toward the eyes
5:17 because there's literally nowhere else
5:20 for them to go. This fish has been
5:22 perfecting its nightmare look for 15
5:24 million years. And honestly, it nailed
5:27 it on the first try. The teeth are so
5:28 big that if a human had proportional
5:31 fangs, they would be dragging on the
5:33 ground when you walked. But here's where
5:36 it gets really messed up. Viper fish use
5:38 these teeth by ramming into their prey
5:40 at full speed. You'd think hitting
5:42 something tooth first would mess up your
5:44 skull pretty bad. Well, Viperist thought
5:46 of that, too. They evolved a built-in
5:49 crumple zone. The first bone behind
5:51 their head is basically a shock absorber
5:53 that keeps their brain from turning into
5:55 soup every time they spear something.
5:56 So, this fish just hangs out in the
5:59 dark, completely motionless, waiting for
6:01 something to swim by. Then, it fires
6:03 itself forward and impales whatever was
6:05 unlucky enough to be in the
6:07 neighborhood. There's no chase scene.
6:09 There's no fancy hunting strategy. Just
6:12 pure brutal lethal efficiency. And the
6:14 best part, they do this while glowing.
6:16 Viper fish have lights all along their
6:17 belly to camouflage themselves from
6:19 below and a little fish lure on their
6:21 back to attract prey from above. So,
6:23 they're basically a floating death trap
6:25 with a neon sign that says free food
6:27 here. And they're still doing this
6:29 today. Right now, somewhere in the deep
6:32 ocean, a viper fish is hanging perfectly
6:34 still with its mouth full of fangs,
6:36 waiting for dinner to come close enough
6:37 to murder. They've been at it for
6:39 millions of years, and they're not going
6:41 to be stopping anytime soon. and they
6:43 are really scary, but they're not that
6:45 big compared to the goblin shark, which
6:47 is also still around today. The goblin
6:49 shark looks like someone tried to design
6:51 a shark, but had only ever had a
6:52 description from someone who'd never
6:55 seen one. Pink skin, flabby body, and a
6:57 snout that looks like it belongs on a
6:59 different animal entirely. But that's
7:01 not even the scary part. The scary part
7:04 is what happens when it opens its mouth.
7:06 The goblin shark can shoot its entire
7:08 jaw forward about a foot outside its
7:11 head. Just boom. Suddenly, there's a
7:13 second mouth where no mouth should be.
7:15 Full of long needle teeth, grabbing
7:16 whatever was unlucky enough to be
7:18 nearby. This thing has been doing this
7:21 exact same strategy for 125 million
7:23 years. We know this because we keep
7:25 finding fossil goblin sharks that look
7:27 exactly the same as the ones swimming
7:29 around today. While everything else is
7:31 evolving and changing and trying new
7:32 things, the goblin shark was just
7:34 sitting there going, "Nah, I'm good.
7:36 This is working fine for me." And why
7:38 would it change? It lives so deep that
7:40 nothing bothers it. It just floats
7:42 around in the dark, waiting for
7:43 something to swim close enough to its
7:45 face. Then it fires that jaw out and
7:48 drags dinner back into its mouth. No
7:50 chasing, no fighting, just pure
7:52 mechanical efficiency. The weirdest part
7:55 is that we barely ever see them. They
7:57 live so deep and are so rare that most
7:59 people who study sharks for a living
8:01 have never even seen a living one. But
8:03 they're down there right now, drifting
8:04 through the darkness with their
8:06 extendable nightmare mouths, doing the
8:08 exact same thing they've been doing
8:10 since before grass existed. And speaking
8:12 of sharks, there's another nightmare
8:14 shark still living today. Frilled sharks
8:16 look normal until you get up close. Then
8:19 you realize this thing has 300 teeth
8:21 arranged in 25 rows, and every single
8:23 one of them is shaped like a tiny
8:25 trident. When I say tiny, I mean each
8:27 tooth is still big enough to do some
8:29 serious damage. This shark is basically
8:31 a 6- foot long swimming mouth that's
8:33 been practicing the same routine for 80
8:34 billion years. It moves through the
8:36 water like an eel, all wavy and smooth
8:39 until something gets too close. Then it
8:40 strikes forward and swallows prey that's
8:44 half its own size. Whole. No chewing, no
8:45 tearing it apart, just straight down the
8:47 hatch. The really disturbing part is how
8:49 good it is at hiding. Frilled sharks
8:51 live in caves and crevices during the
8:53 day, then come out at night to hunt.
8:55 They're almost never seen at the
8:57 surface. So, for most of human history,
8:59 we had no idea they existed. We just
9:01 kept finding their teeth in ancient rock
9:03 and assuming they were extinct. Then, in
9:06 the 1800s, some unlucky fisherman pulled
9:08 one up, and everyone realized these
9:09 things never left. They've been down
9:11 there this whole time, slithering
9:13 through underwater caves and swallowing
9:15 squid hole while the rest of the world
9:17 moved on without them. And here's what
9:19 really gets me. They're still doing it.
9:20 Right now, somewhere in the deep
9:22 Atlantic, a frilled shark is probably
9:24 coiled up in some dark crevice, waiting
9:26 for night so it can go hunt with the
9:28 same 300 to mouth design that worked
9:30 perfectly fine when dinosaurs were still
9:32 walking around. This creature was so
9:35 good at its job that evolution looked at
9:36 this 80 million years ago and said,
9:38 "Yeah, that's terrifying enough." and
9:40 just kept it the same way. But some deep
9:42 sea monsters found even stranger
9:45 solutions in evolution. Female angler
9:47 fish carry around their own personal
9:49 fishing rod with a glowing lure on the
9:51 end. They sit perfectly still in total
9:52 darkness, waving this little light
9:54 around until something swims over to
9:56 investigate. Then they open their mouth
9:58 and swallow whatever was dumb enough to
10:00 fall for the oldest trick in the book.
10:01 That's not the weird part, though. The
10:03 weird part is what happens when a male
10:06 anglerfish finds a female. He bites onto
10:09 her and then never lets go, ever. In
10:11 fact, his mouth fuses to her skin, his
10:13 blood vessels connect to hers, and he
10:15 basically becomes a permanent sperm
10:18 producing tumor on the side of her body.
10:20 This has been going on for 50 million
10:22 years, by the way. These things are
10:25 ancient. That was 50 billion years of
10:27 males biting onto females and becoming
10:29 living, breathing reproductive organs.
10:31 The females are totally fine with this
10:32 arrangement because finding a mate in
10:35 the endless black void of the deep ocean
10:37 is basically impossible otherwise. Just
10:39 like my dating life, the male doesn't
10:41 even have a functioning digestive system
10:43 once he attaches. He just hangs there
10:44 getting all his nutrients from the
10:46 female's bloodstream, waiting for her to
10:48 need his services. Some females have
10:50 multiple males attached at once, which
10:51 means they're swimming around with
10:53 several zombie boyfriends grafted to
10:55 their bodies. Evolution looked at the
10:57 problem of finding mates in infinite
10:59 darkness and said, "You know what? Let's
11:00 just make all the males into parasites.
11:02 And it works so well that there are now
11:04 dozens of different angler fish species
11:06 all doing the exact same horrifying
11:08 thing. The female does all the hunting,
11:10 all the surviving, all the work while
11:12 carrying around what are essentially
11:14 biological sperm banks that used to be
11:16 an independent fish. It's the most
11:18 one-sided relationship in the animal
11:20 kingdom. And for some reason, both
11:21 parties seem completely happy with it.
11:23 But angler fish weren't the first to
11:25 thrive in impossible places. To find
11:27 that creature, we need to go back to the
11:30 beginning. 430 million years ago, the
11:32 ocean floor was splitting open and
11:35 spewing out water so hot it should have
11:37 killed everything from miles around.
11:39 Instead, worms moved in and built
11:42 cities. Now, these weren't normal worms.
11:44 They were tube worms that figured out
11:46 how to live next to underwater volcanoes
11:48 by making friends with bacteria. The
11:50 bacteria would eat the poisonous
11:51 chemicals coming out of the vents and
11:53 the worms would eat the bacteria.
11:55 Everyone is happy except for anything
11:56 that tried to live anywhere else on the
11:58 seafloor because it was basically a
12:00 chemical wasteland. We know this
12:01 happened because we keep finding
12:04 fossilized worm tubes and ancient rocks
12:06 that formed around these volcanic vents.
12:07 Thousands of tubes all clustered
12:09 together around what used to be black
12:13 smokers shooting out 700° water. The
12:16 worms had no eyes, no mouths, and no way
12:18 to catch food on their own. They just
12:19 sat there in their tubes letting their
12:22 bacterial roommates do all the work. In
12:24 fact, they're doing the exact same setup
12:26 in the exact same places with the exact
12:30 same species of bacteria. 400 million
12:32 years later, and tubeworms are still the
12:34 only things tough enough to live right
12:36 next to underwater lava geysers. The
12:38 really wild part is that these vent
12:40 sites don't last very long. The volcano
12:42 shut off, the chemistry changes, and the
12:44 whole community has to pack up and find
12:46 a new vent somewhere else. But somehow
12:47 these worms have been playing this game
12:50 of volcanic musical chairs for nearly
12:52 half a billion years. Most creatures
12:54 spend their time trying to avoid getting
12:56 cooked alive. Tubeworms spent 430
12:58 million years perfecting the art of
13:00 living inside a natural pressure cooker
13:03 and turning poison into dinner. And
13:05 speaking of ancient survivors, some fish
13:08 took hiding to ridiculous extremes. In
13:11 1938, a museum curator got a phone call
13:13 about a weird fish that had been caught
13:15 off the coast of South Africa. She went
13:17 to look at it and immediately knew she
13:19 was staring at something that was
13:21 supposed to be extinct for 66 million
13:23 years. The Kissian had been playing the
13:25 ultimate game of hideand seek. While
13:27 everyone else was dealing with asteroid
13:30 impacts and ice ages and whatever other
13:31 disasters were happening on the surface,
13:33 Kisakants just moved into some deep
13:35 underwater caves and decided to sit this
13:37 whole modern era thing out. Scientists
13:39 have been finding Khalisanth fossils for
13:42 decades, going all the way back to fish
13:45 that lived 360 billion years ago. They
13:47 figured these things died out with the
13:49 dinosaurs. Turns out they just got
13:51 really good at avoiding people. They
13:54 were hanging out in caves 600 ft down,
13:55 coming out at night to hunt, and
13:57 basically living the exact same
13:59 lifestyle their great great great times
14:00 a million grandparents have been living
14:02 since before trees existed. The fish
14:05 that got caught in 1938 caused such a
14:07 big deal that they put out a reward for
14:09 anyone who could find another one. In
14:13 fact, it took 14 years to find a second
14:15 fish that had supposedly been extinct
14:17 since the Cretaceous period. That's some
14:19 next level hiding skills right there.
14:20 And when they finally studied living
14:22 kisic ants, they found out these fish
14:24 hadn't bothered to evolve much of
14:26 anything in all that time. Same weird
14:28 fins, same weird skulls, and the same
14:30 weird way of giving birth to live babies
14:32 instead of laying eggs. So, while
14:33 everything else was evolving and
14:35 adapting and trying new things, Kisakans
14:37 were in their caves going, "Nah, I'm
14:39 good. I'll see you in a couple million
14:41 years." But other ancient creatures took
14:43 a different approach to survival in the
14:45 oceans. Imagine walking through a forest
14:47 where every single tree is actually an
14:49 animal. Well, that's what the ancient
14:51 seafloor looked like when sea liies were
14:53 running the show. These things grew 60
14:55 ft tall and swayed in the current with
14:57 their feathery arms spread out to catch
14:59 food floating by. They weren't liies and
15:01 they weren't plants. They were animals
15:03 that just happened to look like
15:05 underwater flowers. And they covered the
15:07 ocean floor in dense forests that
15:09 stretched for miles. Some of these
15:10 underwater trees were taller than a
15:12 six-story building. All of them stuck to
15:14 the seafloor by their roots and waving
15:15 their arms around trying to catch
15:18 dinner. The crazy part is how successful
15:20 the strategy was. For hundreds of
15:22 millions of years, being a giant
15:24 underwater flower was apparently the way
15:27 to go. Seally fossils are so common that
15:29 entire limestone cliffs are made out of
15:32 nothing but their broken stems and arms.
15:34 Literally whole mountains of dead
15:37 sealerly parts. Most of them got wiped
15:38 out during the big extinction at the end
15:40 of the Perian period. But a few species
15:42 said, "You know what? We're just going
15:43 to move deeper." And they kept doing
15:46 their thing in the abyss. We didn't even
15:47 know they were still alive until the
15:49 1800s when someone finally dragged one
15:52 up from the deep ocean. Today, there are
15:54 still sea lilies down there doing the
15:55 exact same thing they've been doing for
15:57 300 billion years, standing around on
15:59 the seafloor, waving their arms in the
16:01 current, catching whatever floats by.
16:03 They're not as tall as they used to be,
16:05 and there aren't nearly as many of them,
16:06 but they're still out there being living
16:08 flowers on the bottom of the ocean. Talk
16:10 about sticking with what works. Now,
16:12 we're about to talk about my favorite
16:14 prehistoric marine reptile, the
16:17 Abyssaurus. Abyossaurus literally means
16:19 bottomless lizard, which is probably the
16:22 most metal name any prehistoric reptile
16:24 ever got. And unlike most dinosaur names
16:26 that sound way cooler than the actual
16:27 animal, this one earned it. This thing
16:29 was a plesaur that looked at the deep
16:32 ocean. Decided that's where it wanted to
16:34 live permanently. Not just visit for
16:36 hunting trips, but full-time residency
16:38 in the abyss. So, it evolved the
16:41 heaviest bones of any marine reptile
16:43 ever found. dense, thick bones that
16:45 worked as built-in weights to drag it
16:47 down into the darkness. Most marine
16:49 reptiles had lightweight bones to help
16:51 them float and swim efficiently.
16:54 Aosaurus went the opposite direction and
16:56 basically turned its skeleton into a
16:58 lead vest. It wanted to sink and it
17:00 wanted to stay sunk. This thing had
17:03 lungs the size of barrels to hold enough
17:05 air for extended deep dives. Then it
17:07 would just drop like a rock into water
17:10 so deep that the pressure would crush a
17:12 human instantly. down there in the total
17:14 darkness. It would cruise just above the
17:17 seafloor with those massive eyes
17:19 scanning for anything dumb enough to be
17:20 wandering around in the void. Small
17:23 head, long neck, perfect for darting
17:25 forward and grabbing squid or fish
17:27 before they knew what hit them. This
17:28 wasn't just some weird experiment that
17:30 lasted a few thousand years.
17:33 Abyssosaurus was doing this for millions
17:35 of years in the early Cretaceous. While
17:36 other plesiosaurs were splashing around
17:39 in shallow lagoons, this one was hanging
17:41 out in the deepest, darkest parts of the
17:43 ocean, living a lifestyle that wouldn't
17:45 be out of place in a horror movie. The
17:48 name says it all, bottomless lizard.
17:50 It's also got like the coolest name of
17:52 any dinosaur out there. It's a marine
17:53 reptile, but it's got the similar naming
17:55 structure as dinosaurs. It literally
17:57 went to the bottom and then just said,
17:59 "This is my home now." But further
18:01 north, things got even weirder in the
18:04 oceans. Opthalmol lived near the Arctic
18:07 Circle 145 million years ago, which
18:09 meant it had to deal with months of
18:11 total darkness during the polar winter.
18:13 Most reptiles would have called that a
18:16 dealbreaker. Athalmath saw it as a
18:18 business opportunity. This plesaur had
18:21 huge eyes that pointed straight up at
18:23 the ceiling of the ocean. It spent its
18:25 entire life staring at the surface,
18:27 waiting for something to swim overhead
18:29 so it could see the silhouette against
18:31 whatever tiny bit of light was filtering
18:33 down. When it found something up there,
18:35 it would rise up from the bottom like
18:36 some kind of underwater horror movie
18:38 monster and grab whatever was unlucky
18:41 enough to be swimming above it. But here
18:43 is the really weird part. Scientists
18:45 have found rocks in this thing's
18:48 stomach. Not fishbones, not squid beaks,
18:51 but rocks. The name Opthalmouth means
18:53 eye of the north, which is pretty
18:54 accurate considering it was basically a
18:56 swimming eyeball that lived at the North
18:58 Pole. But long before any of these
19:01 monsters existed, something made a
19:03 terrible decision. Trilobytes had the
19:06 best eyes in the ocean for 200 million
19:08 years. They had compound eyes with
19:10 perfect crystal lenses that could see
19:12 better than most creatures alive today.
19:13 Then some of them looked at the deep
19:15 ocean and decided to throw all of it
19:18 away. They just gave up sight entirely.
19:19 They now had smooth, blank spaces where
19:22 their amazing eyes used to be. No
19:24 pupils, no lenses, nothing. They
19:26 voluntarily became blind and moved into
19:28 the darkest parts of the ocean where
19:30 they spent the next few hundred million
19:32 years feeling around the mud for dead
19:35 things to eat. This wasn't some gradual
19:36 evolutionary process either. These
19:39 things had perfectly good eyes. Then
19:41 their descendants just didn't. It was
19:43 like something decided that seeing was
19:44 overrated and crawling around blind on
19:46 the seafloor was a better lifestyle
19:47 choice. Obviously, there was an
19:49 advantage to it. That is the whole point
19:51 of evolution where new traits that
19:53 emerge that are beneficial lead to the
19:55 species surviving. So, there was a
19:56 reason. And apparently, it worked out
19:58 pretty well for them because blind
20:00 trilobytes were everywhere in the deep
20:02 ocean. Thousands of them all feeling
20:03 their way around the darkness with their
20:05 antenna, bumping into each other,
20:07 stepping on dead fish, living their best
20:09 lives without any idea what anything
20:11 actually looked like. In fact, they
20:13 survived multiple mass extinctions this
20:14 way. If you can't see the asteroid
20:16 coming, there's no point in worrying
20:18 about it. The last trilobytes on Earth
20:20 were probably the blind deep sea ones,
20:21 still crawling around in the mud, still
20:23 feeling for food with their antenna,
20:25 completely unaware that they were the
20:27 final members of one of the most
20:28 successful animal groups in Earth's
20:31 history. Sometimes ignorance really is
20:33 bliss. But today's deep ocean has its
20:36 own version of unstoppable scavengers
20:38 that look like creepy bugs. Giant
20:40 isobods are what happens when you take a
20:42 regular pill bug and feed it nothing but
20:44 protein powder and steroids for 30
20:46 million years. These things are the size
20:48 of footballs and can go 5 years without
20:51 eating. 5 years. That is nuts. They also
20:54 look creepy as hell. There is a giant
20:56 isopod in captivity that didn't eat for
20:58 half a decade and then died. Probably
21:00 just to prove a point to humans that we
21:02 don't deserve to keep them. They live on
21:04 the deep ocean floor where food is so
21:06 scarce that when something finally dies
21:08 and sinks down to their level, it's like
21:10 Christmas morning. Hundreds of these
21:12 massive ocean bugs will detect the smell
21:15 from miles away and come swarming over
21:16 to the carcass like the world's most
21:18 disturbing family reunion. Once they
21:21 find a dead whale or fish, they'll gorge
21:23 themselves until they are so stuffed
21:25 they can barely move. Literally, it is
21:26 like Christmas dinner. Then they will
21:29 just sit there for months, maybe years,
21:30 slowly digesting their meal while
21:32 waiting for the next thing to die and
21:34 fall from above. The weirdest part is
21:36 how good they are at waiting. Most
21:38 animals would starve to death in a few
21:40 weeks without food. Giant isopods have
21:42 turned waiting into an art form. They'll
21:44 sit perfectly still on the seafloor,
21:47 doing absolutely nothing for longer than
21:48 most people have been alive. And when
21:50 they do finally encounter a predator,
21:52 they just roll up into a ball and wait
21:55 for it to go away. No running, no
21:56 fighting, just full-on defensive mode
21:59 until the threat gets bored and leaves.
22:00 They're essentially the ocean's version
22:02 of that friend who deals with problems
22:04 by pretending they don't exist. 30
22:06 million years of evolution, and their
22:08 survival strategy is eating once every
22:09 few years and hiding from their
22:12 problems. But even those survivors look
22:14 normal compared to what came next.
22:16 Scientists found a fossil that looked
22:18 like someone had bent a giant squid
22:20 shell into a paperclip and decided that
22:22 was a perfectly reasonable way to live
22:24 for 200 years. That's Diplomaceras. And
22:27 yes, you heard that right. It lived for
22:29 200 years. This thing outlived entire
22:31 dinosaurs known to live long. While
22:33 shaped like office supplies, there are
22:35 very few things on Earth that can live
22:37 longer than 200 years. I can only name
22:38 like the Greenland shark off the top of
22:40 my head. Not a lot of things have ever
22:42 lived that long. Most Ammonites curled
22:44 their shells into tight spirals because
22:46 that's efficient and makes sense.
22:48 Diplomac looked at that design and said,
22:50 "Actually, what if I just grew in a big
22:52 U shape instead?" Then it proceeded to
22:54 float around in the ancient ocean for
22:56 two centuries, looking like a 10-ft tall
22:59 paperclip with tentacles. The shell
23:00 shape was so weird that when
23:02 paleontologists first found these
23:03 fossils, they thought they were looking
23:05 at multiple different animals that had
23:07 somehow gotten stuck together. Nobody
23:08 could believe that one creature would
23:10 voluntarily grow itself into that shape
23:12 and then live with the consequences for
23:15 200 years. But apparently the paperclip
23:17 lifestyle worked out great. Diplomaceras
23:19 would float vertically in the water with
23:20 its head hanging down from the bottom of
23:22 the U. just hovering there and grabbing
23:24 whatever swam by. And they did this for
23:27 a very long time. The same individual
23:29 ammonite floating in the same spot
23:31 shaped like a paperclip for longer than
23:33 Canada has existed as a country. They
23:35 counted the growth rings in the shell
23:37 and found 200 of them, which means this
23:39 thing was already ancient when it was
23:41 still alive. Evolution spent millions of
23:43 years perfecting the spiral shell
23:45 design. Then Diplomacer showed up and
23:47 decided to reinvent the wheel as a
23:50 pretzel. Yet, even that weirdness pales
23:52 next to the ocean's first aliens,
23:55 Charna. 565
23:56 million years ago, before there were
23:58 fish, before there were any sharks,
24:00 before there were basically any animals
24:02 you would recognize, the deep ocean
24:03 floor was covered in things that looked
24:06 like they'd been designed by aliens who
24:08 had never seen Earth life before. Charia
24:10 was a 2 m tall feather made of living
24:13 tissue that had no mouth, no stomach, no
24:15 eyes, and no way to move. just stood
24:17 there on the seafloor, swaying in the
24:19 current, absorbing nutrients directly
24:20 through its skin from the surrounding
24:23 water for tens of billions of years. No
24:25 predators existed yet, so nothing
24:27 bothered it. No competition for food, so
24:29 it didn't need to hunt. No reason to
24:31 evolve quickly, so it stayed exactly the
24:33 same, doing exactly nothing that for
24:35 longer than complex life has existed
24:37 anywhere else. These things covered the
24:40 ancient seafloor in vast fields.
24:42 Thousands of them, all identical, all
24:44 motionless, all just standing there
24:46 absorbing chemicals from sea water while
24:48 the rest of Earth figured out what
24:50 evolution was supposed to be doing. They
24:52 had fractal patterns built into their
24:54 bodies that repeated at every level of
24:56 magnification. Perfectly mathematical
24:57 designs that wouldn't look out of place
24:59 in a computer program. Except this was
25:01 half a billion years before computers or
25:03 math or anything that should have been
25:05 able to create patterns that precise
25:07 even existed. When Charna finally went
25:10 extinct, it left no descendants. Nothing
25:12 alive today is even remotely related to
25:14 it. It was an evolutionary experiment
25:16 that ran for 30 million years. Then it
25:18 completely vanished, leaving only
25:21 fossils to prove it ever existed. The
25:23 deep ocean's first complex life forms
25:25 were alien feathered creatures with
25:27 fractal patterns that fed by standing
25:29 perfectly still and absorbing nutrients
25:31 from honestly there are probably
25:33 millions more of animal species even
25:36 weirder we don't even know about cuz
25:37 that is the scary part about the
25:40 prehistoric ancient ocean. There are so
25:42 many species we've found and yet there
25:43 are so many we haven't. There are
25:45 probably monsters that once lived down
25:47 there that we would think were aliens of
25:49 how crazy they are. What do you think is
25:51 still down there today? Let me know down
25:52 in the comments. If you enjoyed this
25:54 video, make sure to like this video and
25:55 subscribe to the channel for more videos
25:57 just like this. And if you want to watch
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