<
https://www.nationalgeographic.com/animals/2020/01/chinese-paddlefish-one-of-largest-fish-extinct/>
"The Chinese paddlefish and its close relatives have been around for at
least 200 million years. The species, reaching up to 23 feet in length,
survived unimaginable changes and upheavals, such as the mass extinction
that killed the dinosaurs and marine reptiles like plesiosaurs that it
swam alongside. In its time, flowering plants evolved, and came to
populate the shores of its ancestral home, the Yangtze River, in
modern-day China.
Much later, bamboo came on the scene, and well after that, giant pandas.
In the last few thousand years, a blink in evolutionary time, the land
filled with people, and China became the most populous country on Earth.
In the muddy waters of the Yangtze, the paddlefish lived as it had for
eons, using its special sword-like snout to sense electrical activity to
find prey, such as crustaceans and fish."
Via Farhad and Jennifer Freeman.
Cheers,
*** Xanni ***
