Which of These Extinct Animal Headlines is False?

Our weekly installment of Two Texas Truths and a Lie.

By Becky FogelOctober 14, 2016 10:45 am,


This week we have two folks from the Lady Bird Johnson Wildflower Center here in Austin: Lee Clippard, the director of communications and Lori Bockstanz, the membership coordinator. 

Today, we have a roundup of stories about extinct animals with Texas ties.

1. A new study finds that once upon a time, creatures known as “bear dogs” prowled southwestern Texas. When they showed up on the scene about 40 million years ago, they were only about the size of Chihuahua – but evolved to become top predators.

2. A paper out in the journal “Nature” this week says Glyptodons might have been around longer than previously thought. Never heard of a Glyptodon? Well, it’s basically an armadillo the size of a Volkswagen Beetle. Scientists thought they had been extinct for 10,000 years, but recently found a fossil on the Texas Coast that’s only 5,000 years old.

3. UT-Austin researchers discovered the oldest known vocal organ of a bird in Antarctica who lived at the same time as the dinosaurs. But here’s the thing: scientists haven’t found these vocal organs among dinosaur fossils. That means that even though birds descended directly from dinosaurs, back in the day, dinos couldn’t squawk and talk like birds.
