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