this post was submitted on 08 Nov 2025
482 points (98.8% liked)
Funny
12252 readers
1492 users here now
General rules:
- Be kind.
- All posts must make an attempt to be funny.
- Obey the general sh.itjust.works instance rules.
- No politics or political figures. There are plenty of other politics communities to choose from.
- Don't post anything grotesque or potentially illegal. Examples include pornography, gore, animal cruelty, inappropriate jokes involving kids, etc.
Exceptions may be made at the discretion of the mods.
founded 2 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
How do those techniques work starting from and elephant skull? Would they guess it had a trunk? Really big nose?
If elephants weren't around anymore to look at, we could potentially notice similarities with the tapir and extrapolate a trunk based on the shape of and connective area on the elephant's skull. We'd have to guess at the specific properties of the trunk, but at least we'd know it was there and be able to support arguments for things like its size without them being pure guesswork.
Without a similar animal I don't know how close we'd get. Maybe it would be a mystery that inspires wild speculation.
I realized just now that I didn't know how an anteater's mug works, and, well...