Transcription
If you take a map and draw an outline around Europe and the more eastern central portions of Asia, you'll realize something pretty interesting, which is that this region, despite being fairly landlocked overall, has an oddly high amount of lakes. And in total, within this highlighted section, you'll find over 500,000 natural ones, making it one of the most lake abundant regions on the planet, despite it not taking up a huge portion of the Earth's surface.
And what's more is that in this area, it's not just the number of lakes, which is odd, but also the amount of water held. As despite only accounting for roughly 10% of land surface, this region holds more than half of the world's total lake water. Now, yes, some of this is just due to the sheer quantity of lakes, but a lot of it comes down to another thing, the Caspian Sea. Because despite the sea part of its name, the Caspian Sea is really no sea, instead actually being the world's largest lake. And it alone accounts for roughly 40% of all lake water. And so that's pretty impressive, no doubt.
But in the grand scheme of history, it's actually not that jaw-dropping as not so long ago, geologically speaking, that is, in the very place it's now situated, was another lake that made the Caspian Sea look like, well, a lake. And its presence alone swallowed up much of Europe and Central Asia, being the largest lake to have ever existed. And this was the Paratthus Mega Lake.
34 million years ago, the legacy period had just begun and Earth was quite different than today. And despite it being cooler than previous times, the global climate was still warmer than the present. And the poles had not quite yet formed permanent major ice caps, meaning that the global sea levels were much higher and leading to large coastal plates in multiple continents as well as coasts, which went far deeper inland as well.
However, for some areas, the effects of the higher sea level and different positions of tectonic plates had far more major ramifications than seen elsewhere, such as leading to the formations of inland seas, which in Europe was a process only intensified by the ongoing creation of the Alps. And these two factors together ultimately resulted in the now ancient body of water, the Neoteus, having its most northern region suddenly cut off from the Mediterranean basin and thus resulting in the first iteration of the Perthus Sea. And yes, I did say sea, not lake. As in the early days of the parthus, that is what it was. Having still been connected to outside oceans and periodically reconnecting with the Neotethus and its successors, such as the Indian Ocean and Mediterranean Sea. And this large body of water back then occupied a big part of Eurasia and is believed to have covered an area greater than the Gulf of Mexico at its peak. and its positioning, the time it was formed, and the fact that it was a large body of water, also resulted in the entire region, surrounding lands included, taking on a warm, humid, and subtropical climate. So, not exactly how you would currently picture Eurasia.
And on top of this, the sea was also quite an unusual one, as it ended up occupying a series of extremely deep basins. In other words, geological depressions, which had formed during the Jurassic period. This resulted in certain parts of the sea developing into shallow coastal environments. While you then had these much deeper open environments as well. But while you may think this mix of habitats and warmer climate would lead to a thriving sea, the newly formed Perthus was in many ways a giant wet wasteland. And this mainly had to do with tectonic activity and external environmental factors which combined figuratively and perhaps literally strangulated the sea, blocking the ventilation of water and causing a buildup of sediment that eventually transformed into an enoxic giant wherein the water was depleted of oxygen and thus making it toxic to most organisms. While the sediment itself ended up becoming a death trap as well, trapping organic matter within. And these lethal conditions lasted for a grueling amount of time, nearly 20 million years to be exact, and kept the area fairly void of extensive marine life.
Yet the Perthus would not stay this way as around 15 million years ago or so in the middle things started to change especially after the Bedinian flooding began a continental scale flood that saw marine waters transgress through Europe and parts of Asia which helped to ventilate the enoxic sea turning it briefly into a bountiful subtropical body of water where reefs and open marine environments were abundant. And it was at this stage in the parthus that we also see life for the first time get a bit interesting so you could say with a trove of marine animals setting up shop. And this included multiple mamalian genre such as large sirenians like the metaytherum and lenturinium who were both more primitive members who could each crack 3 m or 10 ft in length. While not in the water all the time, the artoodactyla brachiotus was also known to frequent the area, having a build that indicated a mostly terrestrial life, but still possessed a few semi-aquatic traits, which implied that it did need to live in the vicinity of water to make the most of life and probably to have life as well, if you get my drift.
Next, you also had a diverse range of prehistoric dolphins, some of which were hyper predatorial as well as marine adapted crocodilians like the gabulosucus, an uncomfortably large croc which belonged to the same family as living gariels, yet was a tad bit more intimidating given that its size could be around 10 m or 30 ft in length. On top of its size, its mouth was also much more robust than those seen in living gariels as well, suggesting that sushi wasn't the only thing this predator was interested in and probably to the dismay of all other life. And speaking of sushi, fish were flourishing in the area as well, being represented by a plethora of families, including a healthy amount of pipe fish and even sunfish, including, by the way, what is regarded as the largest ocean fish yet, the Ostramola, a big guppy that was on average the same length as the largest living mola ever recorded, as well as being even taller than it, meaning it was likely pushing nearly 3 tons in weight.
And with fish, of course, comes sharks, which are technically also fish and were common place in this time, too, and greatly ranged in both size and niche, with some like Reququum sharks being on the smaller side, and then others like the, oh, you know, most infamous shark to ever exist, the megalodon, measuring up to 24.3 m or 80 ft based on a 2025 study, that also reported a weight of up to 104 tons, which is, for perspective, far heavier than the weight of even a Abrams tank. And so undoubtedly, its presence in the area had a massive impact on the entire ecosystem. And getting caught by this shark was the last thing you'd want to do here, as its massive jaws were capable of delivering catastrophic bites, to put it lightly, through hundreds of giant serrated teeth, which together could apply a force of 182,000 newtons, which is more than enough power to literally cleave through the massive amounts of meat, blubber, and bones you'd find in fully grown whales. And so because of its presence along with the other sharks and crocodilians, the paratus sea was not exactly the body of water you'd want to find yourself in during these times.
However, ironically, it also wasn't exactly a place you'd want to be if you were megalodon either, as this open sea did not last for too long. And pretty much just 1 million or 2 million years later, the parade was rudely interrupted by the Alps and the Carpathian Mountains, which were experiencing a period of uplift and leading to the sea again becoming more isolated. And this then resulted in a drop in sea level which triggered a severe salinity crisis which makes even the Dead Sea situation seem tame. And uh there's a reason it's called the Dead Sea with vast evaporate beds of salt being formed and salt domes and diapers forming that were large enough that they would have appeared like giant mountains of salt. And for the uninitiated, highly salty water is not great news for marine life or really any life leading to a local extinction of sorts that saw many of the sea animals here dying out.
Yet, as a wise man once said, nature finds a way. And this great dying would not be the end for the paraththesis story. As funny enough, it was actually following this era of great saltiness that the mega lakes era finally began. Roughly 12 million years later, after the salinity crisis had been going on for two million years and the late meiosene had begun, the tectonic plates were once again on the move and a massive collision between them had taken place, uplifting land once more and finally cutting off the very little connection the Perthus still had and thus fully enclosing it in land which rendered it a lake. However, calling it a lake is almost disrespectful as it was a mega lake unlike no other. And as I said, it is as far as we know the biggest lake so far in Earth's history.
When it formed, it stretched out for a mind-boggling 2.8 million square km or over 1 million square miles, making it actually larger than when it had first been created as a sea. And to really get understanding of its size, know that the Great Lakes of America combined could be laid across the top of this lake 10 times over and still not cover it up. And when it comes to sheer volume, the numbers are even crazier as you would need to stick all the Great Lakes in it, not once, but wait for it, 80 times. Yes, all the Great Lakes 80 times over to fill it up. And at this size, it consumed major parts of multiple countries, including Austria, Bulgaria, Romania, Serbia, Ukraine, Russia, Georgia, Kazakhstan, and Turk Manistan.
And what may seem a bit counterintuitive at first is that when this body of water was cut off, it actually saw a reduction in its saltiness. Partly because outlets of fresh water were now supplying it and because of the creation of those salt formations had consequentially rides of salt from the water. Still though, contrary to what you might believe is possible, the Paratthysus was a mega lake which was not fresh water for the most part, instead being brackish, a slightly salty water that is a mixture of seawater and fresh, with current research estimating that it was about 1/3 of the saltiness of modern-day oceans. And because it was brackish, it means that this mega lake was 450,000 times larger than the largest body of brackish water today, Lake Chilikica.
And so combined this great size, reduction in salinity, and the warm stable temperatures of the waters, life quickly went from not so much to a full-on tantrum. And eventually the mega lake gave rise to some of the most unique marine animals to have ever lived as it acted a bit like a water island leading to a rare situation where an aquatic animals experienced a type of insular isolation and this extended to what are usually the largest animals of all time, whales. Now the term whale today is basically synonymous with giant. But in the parthus mega lake not so much. Its closed off nature meant that any whales that got trapped here had a lot less food to choose from leading to them going on a diet. In a diet you might be putting it lightly as over time the whales of the parthus became the smallest baine whales that we know of.
One of the smaller whales was the Titanicetus, a name which doesn't fit it well, as this was a primitive citation that was only the size of a pygmy right whale, measuring about 6.1 m or 20 ft and generally being lighter than an Asian elephant. Yet, interestingly, it still ate like a baing whale. In other words, using filter feeding. And the crazy thing is that the titanicetus wasn't even the most extreme case as you also had the seedtherum, a whale whose name means whale beast. And yet, it was the smallest baine ever, being a teeny tiny creature that could be shorter than the average NBA player is tall. With the smallest complete adults having measured 2 m or 6'6 ft. Yet, with that said, depending on the individual, gender, and species, they could also be more comparable to Titanicetus. Regardless though, they were unarguably small, but had a proportionally oversized head and rib cage, whereas his tail took the brunt of the shortening, being relatively tiny compared to the rest of the body. And while small baing whale may seem to completely defeat the purpose of their lifestyle, the cedtherum and other dwarf baings did just fine in the parththeus, largely thanks to massive blooms of phytolanin that supported many small organisms the whale could feed on. And interestingly, these large blooms and the unique chemical makeup of the lake also led to something known as paretus blue, not to be confused with methylene blue. And it's hypothesized that because of this, the lake would have been an extremely bright, rich turquoise color. And personally, I find that colorful water tends to make the whole place seem a bit less scary.
And while there are other ancient bodies of water that surely do have a beat in the horror department, the Parthis was still not a place to take lightly. For starters, in the early days of its creation, sharks could still be found within, including our old pal, the Megalodon, who managed to persist and continued raining down terror on the inhabitants, which were now trapped within the lake. Though this did turn out to be their last harrah, so to speak, as relatively quickly, the changes in salinity and underlying chemistry became evidently too much to bear, and they apparently died off relatively quickly with there being no known shark left once the lake fully converted into a brackish region. But I will mention that some shark teeth have been found in the lake beds, suggesting possible continued survival. But the current consensus is that these were actually older teeth that were then just redeposited, which would certainly be a relief to the citations, no doubt. and making the Perthus again a rather unusual place being by far the biggest isolated body of water without sharks presumably.
But just because we aren't aware of any sharks in this brackish mega lake doesn't mean that there was no predators lurking around as in their steed something took over dolphins. The geological record is a bit complex and confusing when it comes to the brackish era but certain evidence shows that adontitis or tooththed whales were common here. Like the baileing whales, many of these guys did seem to be on the smaller size, like the heterodelfus ordon. Both smaller dolphins that are roughly 2 m or 6.6 ft long and are believed to have had similar lifestyles to the still living shortbe common dolphin, which mainly feeds on epipagic fish and sephopods. Other still unidentified tooththed whales have also been found, but none seem to have been that giant with dwarfism clearly have taken a toll on the citations.
And another mamalian group that was thriving here, but it also drank some of that shrinking juice were seals. In light of the fewer number of predators here, they not only multiplied, but also chilled down a bit and didn't have to worry about getting larger in size. And as a result, while seals in the region were plentiful and diverse, they were not that big, with most falling within a similar size range as grey seals. And for the most part, their overall appearances and lifestyle were quite similar to living seals as well. And they likely held a similar diet of smaller, fast prey, all of which they gobbled down with surprisingly sharp and powerful teeth. So don't let those water puppy dog eyes fool you. Also, and fun not so fun fact, their large numbers showed in another way make you a bit uneasy. As historically nearly all seals contain high levels of myopplasma bacteria within their mouths, which through contact with their mouth can cause seal finger, an infection that can lead to cellulitis, joint inflammation, and swelling of the bone marrow, which over time can cause the joints to become literally unmovable. Now, who knows the seals of the parththeus had this bacteria? Yet, given that ancestral forms of myopplasma were already around 600 million years ago, I personally would not want to make that bet.
Separately, on the flip side, one way these seals would have differed from their modern counterparts is in which food items they specialized in. As in this mega lake, one food item that came up a lot more than normal were gastropods, which is just the fancy name for a vast and highly diverse group of mollisks. And I know what you're thinking, boring and not fun. But in Perthus, they were almost the entire party. as it was here that they achieved a nearly unparalleled quantity being so abundant that you'd be hardressed to take a step anywhere and not end up on someone's shell or slimy back. Both the lake beds and shore of the parthus seem to have been swamped of these guys and over the years thousands upon thousands of shells and other evidence of their existence has been found. Typically, it seems that the gastropods were quite small and many could have fit on the tip of your finger while the largest found so far were about the size of the Malaysian fire snail. What's really interesting about these gastropods, though, is that they were literally one of a kind, showing adaptations to the unique water composition of the lake, resulting in the area having the highest endemic amount of gastropods known to any place. Which also means that before the lake formed, none of these unique species existed, and that afterwards, none survived.
A similar situation is also seen with the ostricods as well, which are informally known as seed shrimps. A group of tiny crustaceians who like the gastropods were extremely bountiful here and became uniquely adapted to the waters resulting in numerous endemic species in general not seen anywhere else. And though you may not personally find these little critters all that interesting, they did play a vital part in sustaining the parthus ultimately helping the other walks of life including a type of animal you tend to see in lakes. Drum roll please. Fish. Yeah, there were fish. Shocker. And based on the fossil record, three of the most abundant families of fish in the parththeus were the cypernids, gobbits, and silverides. The numerous general from each family could be found here in great numbers. But again, similar to the other animals we talked about thus far, while their diversity was great, it does seem that they tended to stay on the smaller side. Although there were certain species that could spawn individuals that were unusually big.
And looking past the more common groups, you could also find far larger fish, including what was likely the largest fish in the entire mega lake, sturgeons. Normally, when you think of a sturgeon, you probably don't picture a giant. But in reality, this type of fish can be among the largest in the world when you exclude sharks. And in Perthus, this was no different. With species ranging from 2 m in length or 6.6 6 ft all the way up to 7 m or nearly 23 feet long, which is for record longer than the tallest recorded giraffe is tall or great white shark for that matter. And at this size, these sturgeons would have been over 1 ton in weight. And based on living sturgeons, it is believed that the sturgeons of the parthus would have fed on nearly everything except for citations and seals, with cannibalism even being a possible occurrence given modern-day sturgeon behavior. And while not to the same degree of size, the waters were also home to giant catfish that rival the size seen in living wells catfish. A species that in some cases can break 10 ft or 3 m and casually weigh the same as a lioness. So to all my noodler viewers, the parthus was the place for you. Although anyone who might have considered swimming here should be aware that while not permanent residents, there is a chance you might have encountered the odd snake or crocodilian too. As in adjacent areas and rivers that connected to the mega lake, these critters were present and might have visited from time to time. And this included the natrix, Tommy Stoomas, medium-sized alligators, and constrictor snakes like the paleopyon. So even though the Parthus as a mega lake was fairly tame overall, all things considered, you still had to be on a bit of an edge.
And speaking of edges, the coast of the Perthus Mega Lake was another aspect we cannot forget about with its extensive shorelines stretching out for tens of thousands of miles or kilome creating and making it apart to many different climates and biomes. Which also means that a lot of animals lived on these shores. Now, most of them we can only infer lived around here through what we know about general measin fauna at the time. But there are a few that we know for sure lived closer to the shore given located fossils. And this actually includes one of the largest land mammals ever, the dinothereum. On paper, this thing looked a lot like a primitive elephant. And while it was a probosidian, it was not a true elephant. Instead, belonging to the separate family, the dinotheraday, who were differentiated by their flat skull, unique dentition, and notable downward turning tusks that were used to strip vegetation for consumption. And the dinothereum was an especially large member of this group, possessing a shoulder height of over 4 m or 13 ft. While from a weight standpoint, 12 ton individuals were common, which fairly exceeds the average size seen in the current largest land mammal on Earth, the African bush elephant. Additionally, in spite of their chunky size, these guys were excellent swimmers. And though it would not be frequent, rare cases of dinothereum crossing parts of the Partheus has been speculated on, which also means there could have been the highly bizarre encounter between one of the largest land mammals ever and the smallest whale ever.
The related gothars were also likely present in the surrounding areas as well as hipparion-like horses, multiple felids including saber-tooththed cats, rhinoids, the strange kic, a multitude of rodents and small carnivores. And then on top of all of that, you also had a lot of recognizable modern animals as well. So overall, it wasn't just the water itself gave way to life. The shores and environments they created boosted life as well in helping make late myinasia what it was.
Now, with all this said, as you all can probably tell, there is no longer a giant mega lake in that spot today. Meaning something pretty substantial likely happened to it, which begs the question of what? Well, as it so turns out, being a self-contained lake puts you at a greater risk of drying out as opposed to when you're connected to the ocean. And the Paratthus Mega Lake unfortunately drew the short stick in timing as chaotic climate fluctuations were going on throughout the late measine, which started to put a lot of pressure on the ecosystem. And this pressure eventually turned lethal. Lethal during an event known as the great Carsonian dying wherein salt made a big comeback in the Perthus probably because they were playing too much League of Legends. And then its water levels also lowered with a lot of the bad carnage taking place between 9 to 7.7 million years ago when the lake levels could have been dropping up to 250 m or 820 ft on more than one occasion. And the mega lake overall saw a reduction of 70% of its surface and 30% of its total volume. Unsurprisingly, this horrific drought killed scores of its endemic wildlife, including nearly all of those that had become adapted to brackish waters. And unfortunately, this included the smallest whale of all time, as well as the numerous seals and dolphins. RIP.
It was also around this time that the mega lake started to officially break up, splintering into multiple different successors, such as Lake Penonian, the Caspian Sea, and the Black Sea, with each going on and developing their own unique wildlife. And interestingly enough, at the time this was happening, all three of them were lakes, with only the last one, the Black Sea, being no longer considered a lake due to its connection with the Mediterranean that formed between 6,500 to 7,500 years ago. While then on the flip side, Lake Pannonia no longer exists. And like we established in the beginning, the Caspian Sea is now considered the largest lake on the planet. And while the disappearance of the paratysus can be viewed as a loss, some good did come out of it as its drawing forced many animals to migrate in search of better lands, including based off of at least one hypothesis, the ancestor of modern-day elephants and giraffes who chose to relocate to the more calm plains of Africa at the time and serving as an important reminder that one's loss is often another's gain. Thanks for watching and until next time on Extinctu.