Who made this two meter tall 'devil's corkscrew' millions of years ago?

In the mid-19th century, a rancher in Nebraska, USA, accidentally discovered a rock-hard object protruding from the ground. It is about the size of a medium-sized trunk, but has a uniform spiral structure. At the time, people were surprised at this object and treated it as a corkscrew growing out of the ground. Soon, this strange discovery caught the attention of paleontologist Erwin H. Barbour, a doctorate from the University of Nebraska. He has always liked to collect all kinds of exotic fossils. Before that, he collected and identified mammalian fossils 23 to 2.58 million years ago, mostly of Negene origin.

Meanwhile, he went to the land of a local rancher to survey and found a spiral specimen about 2.7 meters long on the Niobrara River. At a glance, Barbour discovered that the inside of this twisted specimen was a tube filled with sand, while the outer wall was made of some white fiber material. The beautiful structure and perfect symmetry of this specimen made Barbour wonder if they were fossils.

Over the following days, Barbour discovered dozens of similar giant spiral structures. So he reported on it in 1892 and named it Daimonelix, which can also be translated as "devil's corkscrew". But naming these specimens was not enough for him. Just as everyone is speculating about them, Barbour has accelerated his research on them and searched for a lot of relevant documents and information, yet no positive results have been found.

So Barbour decided to do one more field investigation to discover that these samples contained a lot of fine sandstone and perhaps they were from the Miocene, dating back about 23 million years. At that time, this discovery site may have had a huge freshwater lake.

So, in the second year after Barber discovered them, he made his official speculations, arguing that these specimens were remnants of giant freshwater sponges as he found them. There is a lot of plant fibrous tissue in this spiral structure.

Perhaps it was because Barbour was the first to study them that his theory of conjecture quickly became accepted. However, many scientists at that time were still skeptical about this result because during the research and analysis, they accidentally discovered inside these fossilized specimens had bones of a rodent species. prehistoric.

Because according to Barbour's explanation, this is a fossil of a giant freshwater sponge, how can there exist animal bones inside it? As a result, American vertebrate paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope rejected Barber's theory and pointed out that the specimens were likely to be the cavities of an unknown primitive rodent. next.

In the same year, the Austrian paleontologist Theodor Fuchs reached the same conclusion as Edward Drinker Cope. In his view, these strange fossils could have been the underground houses of some type of rodent during the Miocene, and may be related to the genus Geomys.

However, Barbour still defends his opinion and believes that the spiral shape is too perfect to be created by "primitive rational beings". So he and Fuchs, both sides began to argue non-stop to defend their views, but they still could not find a clear answer. But over time, most researchers tend to assume that the fossilized structure is likely a rodent hole. Eventually, the scientists found scratches from the inside of the spiral and determined that they were rodent digging traces of moist soil.

As for which animal species these specimens were made of, it took scientists several years to work hard, and finally in 1905, scientists determined that they were rodents. extinct is related to the modern beaver. This animal was named Palaeocastor, which means "ancient beaver". Their appearance was a combination of a Geomys land mouse and a modern North American beaver and they only live in what is today the Midwestern United States.

This ancient beaver is about the size of a modern North American beaver. They have short tails, small ears and eyes like kangaroos. The difference is that their claws and incisors are relatively long, so they are not afraid of being worn during burrowing.

It can be determined that it is an extinct beaver species because its incisors are well matched to the grooves within the specimens. This was discovered by University of Kansas professor Larry D. Martin, who examined more than 1,000 ancient fossil caves in the 1970s.

This ancient beaver used long incisors to dig out these spiral structures by twisting themselves straight to the ground. And claw marks tend to stay on the sides and bottom of the cave.

At the same time, the geologists turned to Barbour's theory of lake sediment and determined that its fine-grained sediments are formed by wind accumulation under seasonal drought conditions. This is very similar to the climatic conditions common in western Nebraska today.

But why does this beaver dig a spiral mouth instead of a straight down? The scientists discovered that constructing such a tall and tightly coiled spiral entrance on the top of the cave could have two main functions.

On the one hand, it can help maintain the humidity and control the temperature of animal caves, and on the other hand, it can also be used to prevent the entry of other predators. Because for most predators, they don't know how to enter such a spiraled cave. At the same time, the spiral structure also helps the beaver push the soil to dig up more easily than the straight and steep mouth.

Like many of today's cave-dwelling animals, the ancient beaver's nests were majestic and divided into several compartments, with compartments exclusively used to feed the young, and there were upward-facing compartments for use only. with the purpose of putting them to sleep without worrying about flooding.

There are also a number of unearthed compartments with very small widths, which scientists believe are special toilets or 'sinks' for natural water. The reason for the extinction of this beaver is probably because the ecosystem on Earth changes from a rainy to tropical climate and arid and the grasslands that dominate the ground prevent them from adapting.

Micah Soto

Update 30 January 2021