There are almost certainly errors like this in current artists’ depictions. The penguin isnt the only skeleton that doesn’t look like the animal while alive.
In more recent decades we’ve learned to better interpret muscle structure from the bone structures the muscles would attach to, and how they’d move together. Then we can couple that with not only physics, but historical differences in things like atmospheric pressure and oxygen concentration. (For example: How does it move air down that whole long neck to its lungs?)
A lot of updates have been made, but outdated info is still extremely prevalent. It’s also difficult to search for accurate depictions because there’s not a good way to distinguish between a science-based depiction and an artistic drawing.
If elephants weren’t around anymore to look at, we could potentially notice similarities with the tapir and extrapolate a trunk based on the shape of and connective area on the elephant’s skull. We’d have to guess at the specific properties of the trunk, but at least we’d know it was there and be able to support arguments for things like its size without them being pure guesswork.
Without a similar animal I don’t know how close we’d get. Maybe it would be a mystery that inspires wild speculation.
Also elephants, the trunk has no bones in it so it’s just a hole in the skull, I’m sure future generations will portray it but the single giant eye.
But honestly pretty much no animal looks the same as its skeleton because every animal has a lot of fat and connective tissue which just doesn’t get preserved. Really the only animal that looks the same as a skeleton as it does when it’s alive is the frog.
There’s theories that the Cyclops myth came about from ancient people’s finding fossil elephant skulls from the period where European Elephants were a species
(They went extinct in Europe 50,000-10,000 years ago)
Iirc it’s really where cyclops myth came from, they found a mammoth skull and thought that hole is the eye socket. There’s also same thing for dragon as well, people just don’t know what the skull looks like when alive so they made stuff up
A hippo skull is a great example of how soft tissue structure can be seen in bone structure. Check out that enormous jaw bone and compare it to a human skull. It’s easy to see how it must have massive jaw muscles and an incredible bite force.
For another strong jaw you can look at the orca, but notice also how flat its skull is where you’d expect it to be round. On top is where it keeps its echolocation melon.
There are almost certainly errors like this in current artists’ depictions. The penguin isnt the only skeleton that doesn’t look like the animal while alive.
In more recent decades we’ve learned to better interpret muscle structure from the bone structures the muscles would attach to, and how they’d move together. Then we can couple that with not only physics, but historical differences in things like atmospheric pressure and oxygen concentration. (For example: How does it move air down that whole long neck to its lungs?)
A lot of updates have been made, but outdated info is still extremely prevalent. It’s also difficult to search for accurate depictions because there’s not a good way to distinguish between a science-based depiction and an artistic drawing.
How do those techniques work starting from and elephant skull? Would they guess it had a trunk? Really big nose?
If elephants weren’t around anymore to look at, we could potentially notice similarities with the tapir and extrapolate a trunk based on the shape of and connective area on the elephant’s skull. We’d have to guess at the specific properties of the trunk, but at least we’d know it was there and be able to support arguments for things like its size without them being pure guesswork.
Without a similar animal I don’t know how close we’d get. Maybe it would be a mystery that inspires wild speculation.
I realized just now that I didn’t know how an anteater’s mug works, and, well…
Hippo skulls are wild without the rest of the hippo around it!
Also elephants, the trunk has no bones in it so it’s just a hole in the skull, I’m sure future generations will portray it but the single giant eye.
But honestly pretty much no animal looks the same as its skeleton because every animal has a lot of fat and connective tissue which just doesn’t get preserved. Really the only animal that looks the same as a skeleton as it does when it’s alive is the frog.
There’s theories that the Cyclops myth came about from ancient people’s finding fossil elephant skulls from the period where European Elephants were a species
(They went extinct in Europe 50,000-10,000 years ago)
Iirc it’s really where cyclops myth came from, they found a mammoth skull and thought that hole is the eye socket. There’s also same thing for dragon as well, people just don’t know what the skull looks like when alive so they made stuff up
A hippo skull is a great example of how soft tissue structure can be seen in bone structure. Check out that enormous jaw bone and compare it to a human skull. It’s easy to see how it must have massive jaw muscles and an incredible bite force.
For another strong jaw you can look at the orca, but notice also how flat its skull is where you’d expect it to be round. On top is where it keeps its echolocation melon.
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