History’s Most Dangerous Sea Monster Found on a Mountain in Canada

Bright Side

You won’t believe what scientists found high in the mountains of Canada—an ancient sea monster that once ruled the oceans! 🐉⛰️ It sounds like a fantasy, but it’s real: a terrifying predator that swam the seas millions of years ago… now frozen in stone on dry land. How did a creature from the depths end up on a mountain? The answer will take you back to when Earth looked nothing like it does today. This isn’t just a fossil—it's a warning from nature’s prehistoric past about survival, evolution, and massive planetary change. So strap in for a mind-blowing dive into history’s deadliest sea monster—found in the most unexpected place. 🌊🦴 Ready to climb a mountain and stare into the jaws of the past?  Credit: The Economist / YouTube Kiabugboy / YouTube https://www.livescience.com/animals/extinct-species/scientists-uncover-inside-out-legless-headless-wonder-that-lived-long-before-the-dinosaurs CC BY 3.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0: Silurian age landscape: By Віщун, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=162991605 CC BY-SA 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-sa/4.0: Mosura size: By Junnn11, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=166056137 Mosura fentoni: By Junnn11, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=166055780 Opabinia regalis: By Junnn11, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=83863123 Utaurora comosa: By Junnn11, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=115248659 Prototaxites apex: By G.J. Retallack, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48796185 Prototaxites sp.: By Bloopityboop, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=148464769 Prototaxites phycobiont: By G.J. Retallack, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=48796183 CC BY 4.0 https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0: Moysiuk & Caron 2025 f02: By Joseph Moysiuk and Jean-Bernard Caron - https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.242122, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Moysiuk_%26_Caron_2025_f02.jpg Moysiuk & Caron 2025 f04: By Joseph Moysiuk and Jean-Bernard Caron - https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.242122, https://commons.wikimedia.org/wiki/File:Moysiuk_%26_Caron_2025_f04.jpg Cambrian Marjum biota: By Stephen Pates​​, Rudy Lerosey-Aubril​​, Allison C. Daley, Carlo Kier, Enrico Bonino, Javier Ortega-Hernández - Pates S, Lerosey-Aubril R, Daley AC, Kier C, Bonino E, Ortega-Hernández J. 2021. - https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.10509, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=132480638 Life on the platform margin: By Zhixin Sun, Fangchen Zhao, Han Zeng, Cui Luo, Heyo Van Iten, Maoyan Zhu - https://academic.oup.com/nsr/advance-article/doi/10.1093/nsr/nwac069/6563905, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=117302553 Moysiuk & Caron 2025 f07: By Joseph Moysiuk and Jean-Bernard Caron - Moysiuk J, Caron J-B. 2025 - https://doi.org/10.1098/rsos.242122, https://commons.wikimedia.org/w/index.php?curid=165224901 Animation is created by Bright Side.  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Music from TheSoul Sound: https://thesoul-sound.com/   Check our Bright Side podcast on Spotify and leave a positive review! https://open.spotify.com/show/0hUkPxD34jRLrMrJux4VxV  Subscribe to Bright Side: https://goo.gl/rQTJZz  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  Our Social Media:  Facebook: https://www.facebook.com/brightplanet/  Instagram: https://www.instagram.com/brightside.official  TikTok: https://www.tiktok.com/@brightside.official?lang=en   Stock materials (photos, footages and other):  https://www.depositphotos.com  https://www.shutterstock.com  https://www.eastnews.ru  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  For more videos and articles visit: http://www.brightside.me  ----------------------------------------------------------------------------------------  This video is made for entertainment purposes. We do not make any warranties about the completeness, safety and reliability. Any action you take upon the information in this video is strictly at your own risk, and we will not be liable for any damages or losses. It is the viewer's responsibility to use judgement, care and precaution if you plan to replicate.

Transcript

00:00Dinosaurs, big ancient bugs, creepy spiders, and scary insects are all cute animals compared

00:06to the monsters that lived on Earth about a half a billion years ago.

00:11For example, here's a creature that swam in the water like a stingray and had three

00:16eyes.

00:17Its mouth was like a pencil sharpener.

00:19Two long claws with forked tips like pincers protruded from its head, and its gills were

00:24somewhere in the back.

00:26This is not a thing from a sci-fi movie, this is Mosura.

00:30Its remains are preserved in excellent condition.

00:33Let's look at it more closely and study other similar monsters.

00:39The Cambrian Explosion, remember this name.

00:42This period is also called the Biological Big Bang, the time when a huge number of different

00:47living creatures began to appear in the ocean, large, small, and tiny.

00:53The ancestors of almost all modern animal groups were most likely born during the Cambrian

00:58Explosion, which lasted from 541 to 485 million years ago.

01:04It was a time when the first truly effective and terrifying predators appeared on Earth.

01:10One of them was Mosura.

01:11It's only the size of an index finger, but you would never want to meet such a creature

01:16while swimming in the sea.

01:18It's scary to imagine what it could do with its pencil sharpener-shaped mouth.

01:23And you probably wouldn't be able to hide from it because, come on, it had two eyes on the

01:27sides and one big eye on its forehead.

01:30Mosura belonged to a group of anthropods.

01:35Scientists called it a sea moth since it reminded them of a moth.

01:39This thing used a flap-like apparatus similar to wings to float in the water like a stingray.

01:45This monster was quite creepy, but its appearance may seem familiar because it's a distant relative

01:50of modern spiders, crabs, centipedes, and moths.

01:56Scientists found several 506-million-year-old Mosura fossils.

02:00But unlike many other similar finds, these ones have been preserved in excellent condition.

02:07The found fossils showed sharp claws, a toothy jaw, and large gills in the tail section.

02:13Some parts of the fossil were so clear that they revealed the details of the creature's

02:17internal anatomy, including parts of its nervous and circulatory systems and digestive tract.

02:23It had jointed limbs like those of modern insects and crustaceans.

02:28When this monster swam in the sea, it probably grabbed its prey with long spiked claws sticking

02:34out of its head.

02:35Many Mosura relatives have claws covered with multiple spikes, which help them grab food.

02:41But that ancient creature had smooth claws forked at the tips.

02:46That is, it grabbed the prey with those tongs, using them like chopsticks, and then brought

02:50it to its mouth.

02:52Of course, this is an assumption, and nobody saw how this creature actually did it.

02:57Unlike many other similar animals, Mosura's posterior segmented body was studded with gills.

03:04Scientists don't know why this was necessary, but they assume that such an unusual breathing

03:08system helped to adapt to an environment with low oxygen content.

03:14Most Mosura led a very active reproductive lifestyle that required high oxygen consumption.

03:19Creepy, dangerous, and reproducing fast.

03:23An excellent set of qualities for one of the most dangerous predators of antiquity.

03:28But what did Mosura eat?

03:30It probably caught different types of worms and small anthropods.

03:35It's nice to think that this monster lived so long ago and was so small.

03:39But what if this creature was the size of a shark and was swimming in the ocean these days?

03:44Perhaps it would become a dominant dweller, and people would swim much less along the coast.

03:50Mosura lived in the water, but was discovered in the Burgess Shale rock formation in the Canadian

03:55Rockies.

03:56Many mountains on Earth were once the seabed inhabited by strange creatures.

04:02One of them was Opabinia.

04:04It had five eyes, a mouth facing backward, a long trunk and claws instead of a nose.

04:11Wait, what?

04:12It's too strange even for science fiction, even for outer space.

04:17In its eccentricity, Opabinia was perhaps the loneliest creature on Earth.

04:23They couldn't find another species that would be similar to this individual until recently.

04:28Meet Euterora.

04:30It seems to belong to the same species as Opabinia.

04:34Its inch-long body was divided into 14 to 15 furrows.

04:38Each of them ended in a pointed flap.

04:41Opabinia had the same body, but it's unlikely that both monsters were friends.

04:46The difference between their timelines was several million years.

04:50It's hard to imagine why these monsters needed such strange body structures.

04:54Why haven't modern filmmakers used the design of those animals to create cool space monsters

04:59yet?

05:00Ok, they were creepy creatures, but what about weird and kinda useless ones?

05:08Scientists have discovered Sue, a legless creature with no head, turned inside out.

05:14Huh?

05:15This 444-million-year-old creature was found in South Africa, north of Cape Town.

05:21They called it Sue after the discoverer's mother.

05:24In fact, it's some kind of new anthropod species that may have lived in low-oxygen waters.

05:30This creature was turned inside out, and the outer shell with the legs and head was lost.

05:36Thanks to mineralization, muscles, tendons, and even Sue's intestines were preserved on the fossil.

05:42It's a great success to find such detailed remains of an ancient creature.

05:47However, scientists still can't determine the evolutionary history of this species.

05:53They're sure that it was a primitive marine anthropod.

05:56Ok, we can see that half a billion years ago, Earth was filled with creepy monsters, which

06:02fortunately are now extinct.

06:04But what about trees?

06:07Were they the same as we see now?

06:09Or was there something else?

06:11Something creepy?

06:13Oh yeah.

06:15Scientists have discovered a new kind of living organism similar to a tree or a mushroom.

06:20It was gigantic and had a very minimalistic design.

06:25Meet the Prototaxites.

06:27It was basically just a big stick with a round end poking out of the ground.

06:32It was smooth, didn't have the usual tree bark, and looked more like a mushroom without a cap.

06:38But scientists have recently found out that it wasn't a mushroom at all.

06:42Prototaxites probably belonged to a previously unknown branch of life.

06:48Prototaxites is considered to be the first giant organism in the history of the planet that

06:52lived on land.

06:54It existed about 420 to 375 million years ago, during the Devonian period.

07:02It was the time when plants began to spread across dry land, forming large forests.

07:07Over time, they began to grow leaves and form roots in the ground.

07:11Then the first seed plants appeared.

07:15The real colonization of land began.

07:17The first anthropods, such as centipedes, arachnids, and other unpleasant creatures, began to walk

07:23among those forests.

07:25Meanwhile, the water was filled with a huge biodiversity.

07:29There was a giant supercontinent on the planet, and smaller parts began to break off it.

07:35During this period, Prototaxites towered over the land.

07:38Some of these things reached 26 feet high and 3 feet wide.

07:42It's like a three-story house and as thick as a palm tree.

07:46But what was it?

07:47A plant?

07:48A mushroom?

07:49Algae, perhaps?

07:52Scientists discovered them in the middle of the 19th century.

07:54But only in 2007 did they conduct chemical analysis.

07:59Research showed that it was most likely a giant mushroom.

08:02But in 2025, scientists refuted this conclusion.

08:05It turns out this may have been an unknown lifeform that existed separately from the kingdom

08:10of fungi, animals, plants, and protists.

08:15Scientists noticed that the inner part of Prototaxites consisted of a number of tubes.

08:20There are similar tubes inside mushrooms, but the tubes of that ancient living thing branched

08:25and joined differently.

08:26They even had a different chemical composition.

08:29The main building block of mushrooms is chitin.

08:32But the Prototaxites contained chemicals similar to lignin, a substance found in the bark of trees

08:38and other plants.

08:40And its anatomy differs from the structure of any other organism known to us.

08:45What were they doing on Earth?

08:47Just chilled and enjoyed the bloom of life?

08:50Did they produce some kind of fruit, like a banana with eyes and claws?

08:54Scientists don't know.

08:56What if it was something that was brought to Earth from outer space?

09:00What if they were flowers planted by another civilization?

09:04What do you think?

09:07That's it for today.

09:08So hey, if you pacified your curiosity, then give the video a like and share it with your

09:12friends.

09:13Or if you want more, just click on these videos and stay on the Bright Side!

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