The Moment Thalassophobia Was Born...

theophobia the persistent and intense fear of deep bodies of water is one of the most common phobias out there and it's really not hard to see why as there are plenty of animals lurking in the depths that look or act rather unfriendly and this notion of oceans and seas being scary is nothing new as prehistoric Waters were just as scary with them more often than not being way more terrifying than they are today with the Mesozoic period in particular being a great time for aquatic nightmares although if you keep going back and back like hundreds of millions of years back you will eventually arrive at a point where the Waters of Earth were actually fairly mundane and somewhat safe with a Cambrian Period which took place half a billion years ago being about the last time where you would have been completely safe swimming anywhere in the ocean which is interesting as it was actually a period of immense diversity as well as the time when fish first evolved who as we know eventually gave way to things like this this and this so when did it all go wrong when did the Waters of Earth go from being safe to a big no no one could argue that it was the oriv Vian since it saw the rise of the first aquatic creatures you'd be quite wary to swim next to large seapods but to be honest even then the waters weren't all that scary no it wouldn't be until 419 million years ago that the Earth's waters would finally receive an abundance of hores that essentially guaranteed that something like a human was no longer safe treading in the water and thus signifying the moment in which theophobia originated so to speak this was the devonian also known as the age of fish this moment in Earth's history transpired when the world was dominated by water and any map would have resembled the true Water World with 85% of the surface being covered by oceans and seas as opposed to just the 70% today and if the sea levels back then were brought to the present then our Maps would look something like this at the time the globe was dominated by four large bodies of water that no longer exist the panthalassic the reic the protus and the Paleo teus each one was quite sizable by modern standards yet the panthalassic was the only one considered to be a true super ocean being significantly larger than the Pacific with its widest point having been two times greater this means that in some areas you wouldn't be able to find land in any direction for thousands of miles or kilometers making it a true nightmare for anyone with thalassophobia yet ironically it wasn't the deep ocean that you had to worry about is all the heie GB animals seem to have been concentrated in the waters around the land masses which were just as weird and unrecognizable as the oceans were in the center of the Equator you wouldn't have found Africa but Euro America a continent composed of present day Europe and North America which was surrounded on all sides by water and smaller Islands meanwhile to the north you'd run into Siberia and Kazakhstan both Islands as well and this trend of being marooned continued to the east where South and North China both lay separated from one another while in the South the largest continent of the time was found gandana which was composed of Antarctica India Arabia Australia Africa and South America the Seas and oceans bordering these land masses were filled with a huge selection of panic inducing creatures with the highlighted sections in particular showing areas best to avoid as this is where Evolution produced the first giant jaw fish now these guys have been around since the silan but it was only during the Onan that they leveled up perhaps thanks to the equable and stable tempered conditions of the time whatever the case something did the trick as devonian Earth unlocked a super family of fish so lethal that they remain iconic to this day the duncle osteoid this was a group of placoderms or armored fish that emerged during the early devonian and quickly took over the majority of aquatic ecosystems becoming the largest Predators around and possessing the most formidable tools of the bunch I'm sure you recognize the biggest and baddest one the dunk closius who was in many ways the Earth's original sea monster as it was the first multi-ton Predator they could hunt anything pretty much anywhere this large fish loved to stock shallow Coastal Waters but could still be found in open oceans and is known to have lived throughout North America Europe and Africa making it one difficult creature to avoid which is very unfortunate as this thing was kind of like a great white on steroids having been far more robust and chunky while also Poss possessing highly durable armor composed of dermal bone that formed a large plate along its entire skull in the front section of its trunk so if you got caught there would be no point in trying to fight it and even without the armor this monstrosity was also far too large to be bothered by a punch or kick however its true size is something of a mystery as its armored head was usually the only thing that became fossilized once it died leading to some very diverse size estimates and these predicted sizes range from 4. 1 to 10 m or 13 to 33 ft but for now the largest reliable estimates are considered to be 5 m or 16 ft equivalent to the length of a decently sized great white yet because of its build even smaller duncle oeus could still be over 2 tons which is greater than the weight of the heaviest recorded great whites and one to keep in mind that because of the scarcity in the fossil record it's very possible the larger specimens are out there but regardless many people think that its size reduction is a good thing in terms of helping it seem less ominous but if anything it would have made the Dunkle osus that much greater of a threat to humanized prey as something of our size suddenly becomes a very nice snack and let me tell you it would have gotten this snack with Incredible ease as it had one of the deadliest Jaws ever having been equipped with a Titanic mouth which was aligned not with teeth but with literal giant plates of bone that were extremely sharp and could close with such extreme power that when the tips of the Fang connected they generated up to 880,000 pounds per square in of pressure which is not only greater than anything seen in any living or extinct fish but even more powerful than the force generated by a 50 caliber gun and then when you combine this force with its pseudo teeth it would have been able to cleave through bone and Tough Armor like it was made of hot butter and it somehow gets even worse because even if you did see this prehistoric Jaws coming for you and were able to somehow get ahead of it you would still get chopped up because the dunkly osius opened its jaws in a very peculiar way using a four bar linkage mechanism which is seen in pump jacks which allowed it to open its mouth with crazy speed achieving maximum opening within 20 to 60 milliseconds so basically twice as fast as you can blink and the problem with this is that this absurd quickness created a suction effect every time its jaws were open meaning that any prey in front of it would soon find itself not in front of it and allowing for a clean devastating and likely fatal bite and we were actually able to see what kind of damage it did a scientist located a specimen of Titanic this and another dun oeus which bore severe damage attributed to a Dun osus showing just how effective its bite was against large animals and highlighting that nothing was safe from its grasps not even itself the dunk alone made the devonian waters the last place you'd want to swim but it was just the tip of the iceberg as it was joined by more than 10 others of its own kind many that were within limb removing size and a few that would definitely have liked to snack on something human sized as seen with the east manosas and Wester lius both large duncle osteoids which were around bull shark size and located in Australia and as a super family the dunks achieved a near Universal range and were around for basically the entire devonian so no matter at what point or where you were at you could expect to find at least one overpowered aquatic Pac-Man and unbeknownst the most there was even a dunkly osteoid around that was actually bigger than the duncle oeus at least from a length standpoint the heter oeus this creature was known to roam the Waters of Europe and Greenland and while it did not exactly look like a close relative of the dun oeus it sure was despite sharing a closer appearance with present day whale sharks and its early similar looks to whale sharks is likely the result of convergent evolution as paleontologists think that the heter oeus might have actually been a planktivorous animal meaning it fed on Plankton this allowed it to grow to massive sizes with one species the asmi having reached an estimated length of 6 m or 20 ft akin to a decently sized Orca and though it is expected to be planktivorous there is still the possibility that heter oeus was actually more of a voracious Hunter who perhaps used its wide flat body to stick to the floor and Stage ambushes kind of like how a Pacific Stargazer does plus even if it was a gentle giant its appearance still wasn't exactly the most conducive to mental or physical health if you swim into it unaware and coincidentally there was another example of a similar situation but with an animal that was even more likely to be a filter feeder and that is the Titanic fist funnily enough despite looking more like a dunk than the heter oeus did this giant was actually part of a different placoderm super family the dyala and while it was a harmless filter feeder he used a small unsharpened mouth to suck in small fish it still might have given you a heart attack if swimming straight for you as it was an absolute unit measuring up to 7. 6 M or 25 ft which if accurate likely made it the biggest fish on Earth at the time and to make it even more unappealing it sported very prominent and large fins that gave it almost a shark-like Vibe especially if you didn't get a good Glimpse at what it was meanwhile the rest of its family were thankfully much smaller but not necessarily friendlier as some of them like the bungarus and dcus were pretty much dunk mimics having had sharp fangs powerful jaws and grew to respectable sizes with these two measuring over 3 m or 10 ft and in the case of the bonarius it also had a built-in spear at the end of its mouth that made it that much more intimidating and deadly to its prey now these guys paired with the duncle osteoids were likely more than enough to fill anyone's desire for thalassophobia though you don't get to be called the age of fish for just producing a few memorable groups and sure enough the devonian gave birth to multiple other unsettling animals that often get very little attention one such example being the anticodon forms this order a primitive lobed fish was globally distributed throughout the devonian and was actually one of the first to diverge from the celant lineage however if you saw one up close you'd likely not be able to appreciate its evolutionary importance as these fish were among those that were very much lethal to Big bodied prey reaching quite impressive sizes what really made them deadly though was their highly unique skulls and Jaws that kind of resembled those seen as snakes and were highly flexible and kinetic thanks to their heads being stitched together by loose bones that at some points weren't even connected this allowed them to strike prey at Great speeds without the risk of skull fractures and let them consume prey many times bigger than other similar siiz Predators could and this all reached a climax in the onus the largest member of this order to have ever lived and the biggest bony fish during the entire middle devonian this Menace was known to have a Cosmopolitan range meaning it popped up anywhere it could and was found in both shallow and deep Waters there adult grew up to 4 M or 12 ft in length and sometimes weighed over 350 lb or 160 kg equivalent to the weight of a female lion this makes it quite Hefty even by modern terms and yet it was remarkably stealthy with paleontologists thinking that it used its sturdy front fins to quote unquote walk along a reef or slowly drift beneath the unsuspecting victim before using its giant back tail to rapidly strike it causing devastating damage and many times it might have simply swallowed the animal whole and and thanks to an actual specimen found with a plaer inside it we know that occasionally these fish would gulp down prey half their length in a single motion so imagine something basically hum sized being suddenly gulped whole suddenly you may not feel so safe around this guy though truthfully you might have hoped for a swallowed ending as the alternative was much worse because each onus as well as all of its relatives had giant needle-like teeth throughout its entire mouth that punctured deep within flesh with ease and at the very front they had even bigger tusk-like teeth that were arranged in whls and were literally retractable granting these predatory fish the ability to freely move these enlarged teeth around and essentially thrust them and thus giving onaona forms just one more way in which they could kill you another interesting group of fish you'd be almost guaranteed to see were what I like to call the copycat sharks scientifically known as clad sakade like sharks these fish were cartilagenous and looked a lot like them but they were not true sharks and were likely more closely related to kaimas who ironically themselves are nicknamed ghost sharks breaking from the usual Trend seen in the other devonian groups this family had a fairly limited range with remains being known from just Morocco and North America where they were represented by two different Genera the clat salaki and the mcbo salaki but surprisingly despite having a small range these shark-like fish are actually well understood thanks to some remarkable specimens who retain traces of skin muscle fibers and internal organs these finds have shown researchers that across the two kinds cladids were typically about the same size as reef sharks and had heads quite similar to what seen in frilled sharks while their bodies were more reminiscent of mackerel sharks indicating a high degree of agility and speed a hypothesis further proven by the discovery of stomach content which showed that they would routinely eat prey tail first the remains found in their stomachs also displayed their ability to hunt down a wide range of animals as Ray fined bony fish conod hag-like fish and arthropods were all located within it it's thought that to kill these various animals cladids would use their three prong teeth to tightly grip prey which could then be swallowed or shaken until killed they were also one of the first vertebrates to evolve teeth replacement helping them both to maintain their sharpness and giving them the ability to go all out on victims without having to worry about tooth damage so now this this group in addition with the onod forms dunkly osteoids and their mimics really made the devonian a world ran or swam by fish but like any good horrific moment in Earth's history there was of course non-fish creatures in the water as well that were also Highly Questionable the most notable of which were the Ides or as most know them the sea scorpions now they definitely looked a lot like scorpions superficially that is but these arthropods were not true scorpions and their closest living relatives are actually horseshoe crabs nevertheless c scorpions did share a lot of similarities with modern scorpions including a similar skeletal construction segmented bodies jointed appendages and in some Genera remarkably similar telsin indicating the possibility that certain sea scorpions were venomous with the best example being the use Arana a 2.

5 ft or 0. 8 M long genus that has what appears to be a giant Stinger at the end of its tail now the good thing is is that while a stab from this guy wouldn't have felt too Pleasant it at least wasn't human sized a reassurance not found in others though as in the devonian they got much bigger while also becoming more diverse going from one genus accounting for 90% of all remains to having a fairly equal distribution of over 100 kinds many of them became highly specialized with some inhabiting shallow estuaries and eating tiny prey While others preferred reefs and hunted some pretty large game of the many to emerge the most notable from a perspective was the jcal opterus a beastly arthropod found and closed off Coastal bodies of water where it held the title of apex predator with individuals growing in excess of 2. 5 M or 8.

2 ft making them among the largest arthropods to have ever lived and they might have weighed more than a fully grown reindeer so obviously seeing something swim towards you that looks like a super sized scorpion is terrifying but fortunately it was one of the few IDs that opted for a powerful swimming tail instead of a stinger which then unfortunately allowed it to Stage powerful ambushes and Achieve impressive speeds while swimming and so without the Stinger instead of stinging or stabbing prey to death this Predator instead relied on its one meter or 3ot long pincers to get the job done as each one could clamp with some serious power and were adorned with sharp uneven protrusions that would help the grip prey and then Usher them into its waiting mouth or alternatively they could have used their pincers to tear apart and pop holes into tissue a killing method that was confirmed by the discovery of a fish that was found with deep puncture wounds that precisely match the shape of the Jake lopus as pincers and this killing method was really only one of the many ways in which a urd could hunt is like I mentioned some might have used Venom others involved telsin that were serrated and shaped like knives or swords that were used to stab and slash prey and then there were those that raked in prey using wide arms or using highly specialized appendages to sift through substrate eating whatever grub that could find and ironically while this last method might sound boring it did give way to the biggest CA scorpion of all time the hopter day that could be nearly identical in length to the jacal opterus but because of their broad bodies weighed much more perhaps even rivaling the weight of very large cows in other words they were definitely an unwelcome to sight but there is a chance that they weren't something you had to watch out for while swimming in the oceans or Seas the scientists aren't sure if the hopds were pelagic or freshwater BAS B and speaking of fresh water the devonian also happened to be the time in which rivers and lakes became areas to avoid so even if you did find refuge on land going for a little drink could have very well been the end of you as it was then that the Earth's first River Monsters emerged with the king of these new arrivals being the trist copters a diverse and highly successful group of fish like tetotom morpha who could be found in just about every sizable lake and river the members in this group were distinguished by strong fin skeletons deep front fins streamlined bodies and proportionally large teeth in addition to this they also came in all kinds of shapes and sizes leading to some being not that menacing being comparable to a ruler while a few got to be shark sized like the hinia arguably the scariest of the bunch as adults were known to grow to be the same size as the largest recorded bull sharks who as you may know are very much capable of carrying out fatal attacks on large animals yet in spite of having a similar stature the hinia did not have shark-like jaws and instead possessed giant straight and conical teeth that measured 5 cm or 2 in long in other words twice the length of a bull shark's tooth with these oversized needles it would have been able to tightly grip prey in the thickest and slimiest of waters which was a favorite environment for hinia and others of its family as their remains are typically found in areas associated with immense amount of debris and Fallen trees implying low visibility and mariness to get around this these real life River Monsters developed large sensory canals to help detect prey so even if you fell into water that was Pitch Black to you something very likely still had you in their sights and there's the even worse possibility that it didn't matter if you were standing in or by the water either as some paleontologists suggest that thanks to their strong fins trist copters were able to LEAP out of the water onto Banks snatching anyone who thought they were safe and strangely enough there was another another group of freshwater animals that could likely perform a similar feat the alisto stalia to say this CLA was weird would be an understatement as the earliest members I.