“All Todays” Explained | Speculative Zoology 

This video is taking off faster than I ever could have imagined. I can't thank everyone enough! In the interest of scientific accuracy, as other people have pointed out, the animal I show at 9:05 isn't a true snake, but a 'legless lizard' (and the animal shown after is a sea krait)

So... to make accurate depictions forgotten animals... we gotta make them cuter

"The gruesome "Cat" had complex, retractable claws and large, nocturnal eyes. They were predominantly found around human settlements, where it is believed they fed on human children."

The elephant one is less surprising, because we as humans already made that mistake (at least humans who hadn't come into contact with elephants/mammoths). The ancient greeks made the mistake of misinterpeting elephants/mammoths in the past, and it's actually a direct reason why the cyclops was added to their mythology and stories.

5:06 - But looking at that skeleton, a paleontologist would see that the animal would have major problems feeding itself. The front tusks would block it from putting its teeth against a food source, and its front legs and front feet are ill-suited for grabbing food and putting it in its mouth. It would be clear that the animal had some kind of fleshy mouthpiece that protruded far from the front of its skull.

It’s weird how we went from ‘slug lizard’ to ‘wait, they might be sleek and bird-like’, and now we’re at ‘wait, bring some of that chonk back.’

All Tomorrow’s fans when a All Yesterday’s fan walks in:

On the whole "shrink-wrapping" thing. To be fair, if you were to pluck the feathers off a bird it would look surprisingly similar to the "shrink-wrapped" conception of it. The feathers do a lot to give it's appearance volume. You can't really use a meat hybrid chicken you buy from the market as a model because they are an anomaly, they aren't even examples of adult development in the species. However, except for the beak and fleshy crests, most birds looks similar to the "classic" model of dinosaurs if their feathers were missing and had scales on their skin.

I think the Chicken is the best representation of a veloca raptor ! Ive seen mine hunt fight corner prey and even attack squirrels for fun ! They are kinda vicous and the way they move is amazing !

Imagine future scientists in a post apocalyptic world finding this book and taking it as evidence for their renderings

Just think of how many prehistoric animals scientists haven’t actually figured out.

These are terrible misrepresentations of actual animals, but amazing creature designs in a vacuum. I would love to see things like these put into a science-fiction universe.

On the subject of how we think about cows, for years I heard people speaking with genuine awe in their voices about Longhorn cattle. It really perplexed me. How could a cow, even with big horns, possibly be that impressive an animal? I saw them in photographs and movies. Still, I couldn't understand what the big deal was about Longhorns. Then I saw one in real life. Now I get it. It didn't even take the entirety of a single second to finally understand the awe I heard in all those voices. Truly amazing awe inspiring animals.

What’s crazy is most snakes have vestigial appendages, they still have hip or pelvic bones so it makes total sense for them to assume they have limbs! This was really cool

All I’m gonna say as someone who has owned cows is they’re a lot faster and more agile than people think

If I'm not mistaken the "grooves" on the teeth of the baboons are analogous to grooves found on most carnivore teeth and are referred to as "blood grooves." Essentially they prevent the teeth from getting stuck in penetrated muscle when biting deeply into their prey. This is similar to blood grooves placed on kitchen knives so that they don't get stuck in meat..

Very insightful! The illustrations in the style of 'all tomorrows' art really gave them a deep future feel.

I absolutely love this kinda stuff, one of the reasons is because you can’t be wrong, because it’s supposed to be wrong. And making up these ecosystems, and theoretical niches and behaviors, I just love world building.

So, this is like a spin-off of 'all tommorows' where the asteromorph scientists interpret these animals by bone alone? Thats actually really really neat.

Its a good thing that all our current animals are well documented, from books to papers to movies and shows as well as on the internet

2:40 hey guys look, it’s King

Imagine the Asteromorphs just successfully clone a modern pre-stars human with memories and all and the human just goes "what the fuck is this"

A bad scientist will never admit when he is wrong, a good one will always assume he might be.

I absolutely love kosemens works and was pleasantly surprised by this video being s9 centred around him!

This is AMAZING HAHAHA I love this thought experiment so much, speculative paleontology combined with these extremely detailed drawings and your hilarious commentary is something I ABSOLUTELY need more of LOL I'm impressed by how many different ways you found to say essentially the same thing for each animal-- that's great scriptwriting right there 😂 be honest, how many times did you Google synonyms

this really makes me think of how ACTUALLY the dinosaurs looked like.

I visited my grandmother recently who has dementia, when she asked me what books I've been reading, I told her I was reading the Origin of Species and as soon as I said that it was like a light switch flipped in her mind and the dementia vanished. We had a nice long discussion about biology. After a while I went out to my truck and got a Cat skull and we talked about what you could infer about that animal if all you had was the skull. (she's a retired science teacher)

Just to note, bones do have marks where muscle attachments can be found and can be used to estimate how big that muscle is.

I'm surprised how many of these I guessed, I think that speaks volumes to either the core structure of some animals remaining the same regardless of "tampering", or possibly a bias that the authors and illustrators were simply unable to shake.

The reconstructed cow looks like a gazelle IMO.

Love how manatees are still considered to be puppy-faced babies even to aliens and future civilizations.

This makes me want to have a 'The future is wild' type of series with those so bad

I love C.M. Koseman i heard about his book all tommorows a few days ago and i love it

This made me realise that the T-Rex's small arms could be Dodo like wings

Imagine if they found bat skeletons? They would be like “ah yes, nightmare demon! They were predators they fed of the flesh and depression of orphans!

1:07 and john conway, pictured here.

Honestly I love this video and I love this book, I think it's opening the eyes of the people who see dinosaurs of nothing but giant scaly monsters instead of something much more plausible, luckily with modern technology we're starting to really push back on the shrink wrapping, and hopefully generations from now dinosaurs being feathered will be commonly accepted, because as it stands now most people still keep pushing the idea of giant scaly monsters out of stubbornness, most tend to make the argument of "they're related to crocodilians" which technically is slightly true also isn't at the same time. Prehistoric crocodilians are not considered dinosaurs at all, that's because crocodilians are still alive and their ancestors are just prehistoric crocodilians such as Sarcosuchus, Deinosuchus, and Purussaurus, all of which modernly split off into alligators ,caiman, crocodiles, and many more, and the creature that prehistoric crocodilians stemmed from a more land based carnivore that adapted to water quite quickly, so overall prehistoric crocodilians were very distant from theropod dinosaurs and the closest they were related to were very crocodilian dinosaurs of which they were still very distantly related that we're known for being semi aquatic (which hint didn't include popular land based dinosaurs), and so it's inaccurate to say modern crocodilians are ancestors of dinosaurs because crocodilians are still alive and cannot be the direct descendant as they're just the ancestor of prehistoric crocodilians which again are no where close to dinosaurs and are very separate. It has been concluded overall that modern birds are the absolute closest to the direct ancestor of dinosaurs which is extinct, so whether people want to admit it or not basically every dinosaur you grew up knowing was partially or completely feathered/furred in some regard, whether it be quills or full on feathers they probably had it, and their would be few exceptions to this rule, I mean look at modern birds, they got their feathers from somewhere, look at all our large predators on modern earth, all of them are furred or feathered, hell even hippo's and elephants have light fur, the only real creatures we have that aren't are generally small like lizards or salt water crocodiles, and the big ones such as crocodiles are almost fully aquatic which provides the reason for the lack off feathers, the biggest lizard we have is the komodo dragon which still is much more distant to dinosaurs then birds. Lizards may be more related then say crocodilians but are still below birds, it doesn't take a genius to comprehend that dinosaurs may have been far less scaled then we depict them and may have looked drastically different then what media makes them out to be, it's also not too hard to predict colors on some, for example megalodon closest living relatives are mako sharks and the great white, and so therefor the colors would transfer down, as colors generally stay the same throughout a family tree, the only exception to this are birds that have many species and live within the same area so therefore have to have different colors to distinguish between one another, so for dinosaurs that didn't have many species that lived in the same area and time within their family tree would generally have their colors stay relatively the same throughout time. So as for dinosaurs we have the most information on it wouldn't be the hardest to predict colors that would follow throughout the tree with little variation, regardless I'd love to talk my mouth off about dinosaurs but I should probably stop here. The one take away that I want someone to have from reading this, especially if your the type to cling onto shrink wrapping is that dinosaurs, and overall animals don't fit our human expectations a lot, and it's okay for them not to, we can't bend reality to comfort ourselves from the truth, and we should take large steps forwards to strive for more accuracy with an open mind.

"Hummingbirds are so innocent-looking, it's hard to imagine anyone interpreting them as something frightening" The Aztecs saw the hummingbird's hyper-aggressive nature and its incessant thirst, and made it an avatar of their deity Huitzilopochtli. You know. The one that they sacrificed prisoners of war to with the whole cutting-out-hearts thing because of his eternal thirst for blood.

I'm very curious what an interpretation of a human skeleton would look like.

This was such a cool video... it's crazy to think that animals that never got to live alongside humans, we may never be able to correctly see how they actually looked, like ever...

You forgot about finger boy where it is thought to eat fruits, insects, and dreams of young children. It is a speculative concept for the bat

This is the best way to make a spec evolution alien.

Speaking of misinterpreting animals, that first clip of a "snake" is actually a legless lizard. Also, while some of these make sense, we have to remember that bones tell more than we realize. Muscles attach to bone and leave their mark, so paleontologists can usually tell which bones supported dense muscles. Ones like the baboon wouldn't make sense -- the venom mistake is def plausible, but the hands/feet wouldn't be too useful for sprinting. For the cow, the bones are bulky for weight-bearing and wouldn't point towards a lithe, fast animal. It's a really cool idea, but some of the traits seem like they're only given for how crazy/different they would be. It's like if biologists only had skeletons, but also didn't know how skeletons interact with the rest of the body.

C.M. Koseman has truly blown my mind and made me question everything I thought I've ever known. Yes, it's all speculative, but it makes me wonder how much we really can be certain of and how limited our intelligence really is. Whatever he's smoking, I'll try a tenth of it.

I don't know why this is on my recommended, but I love it

start drawing accurate depictions of animals in cave walls yall, that's gonna be essential material for the future

It's incredible how many times i wanted to say "That's a dog!" in this video.

The Manatee one is like the _Spinosaurus_ story. We once thought it was a fully land animal that looked like JP3's spino based in fragmentary remains, but it turns out to have really been semiaquatic with a paddle tail and short back legs.

That was really interesting, the narration was fun too, just subbed

Its rare to see a small channel put out content this high in quality. Keep up with it and you'll get to big numbers in no time. Great video!

My favorite thing about this is that the manatee drawing is literally just a capybara

It’s so shocking how 11months ago he had 1k subs now 11months later he has over 300k congratulations🥳

I love this video. I always wonder about things like this when I see videos about dinosaurs and other prehistoric animals. I wonder how much we really know.

"the predatory hippo, a behemoth with imposing fangs and deadly jaws." - Yall ever seen a hippo in real life? this description is spot on

By their fossilised remains you would probably never know that spiders made webs, zebras and tigers have stripes, or that octupus produced ink and were able to changed color and texture.

Due to how only one author presented with a photo, and other ones with their avatars, I like to imagine, that this book was a collective effort of a feathered dinosaur from the past, modern human, and an alien creature from the future. Kind makes all the things from "All Yesterdays" weirdly fit together better

Thanks to them, I now realise the amount of authority bias in human knowledge. From young, we were taught about how things supposedly looked as fact. But even medieval artists who lived in the same time period as elephants, and had descriptions, drew them all skewed. We're definitely, DEFINITELY way off about something in quantum physics, and maybe a little history.

the animal at 9:05 isnt a snake tough, its a legless lizard. Its an easy mistake to make but legless lizards have stiffer bodies, non (or only slightly) slit tounges and eyelids. They also eat bugs and slugs as opposed to rodents or other snake prey.

Anyone who's ever seen the horror that is a raccoon skeleton instinctively understands this issue

I love the concept. You need only look at drawings of animals from ye olde medieval times, where the artists only had skeletal remains or, most often, simple descriptions from others who had traveled abroad, and their interpretations of animals like leopards or elephants are absolutely wild.

so basically we could be wrong about every dinosaur

Before anyone gets the wrong idea about this, palaeontologists actually have a really good understanding of what dinosaurs looked like. A big misinterpretation people make with this All Todays section of the book is applying its depictions of modern animals to how palaeontologists today depict dinosaurs. Modern palaeontologists have much more to work with than just fragmentary fossils, such as living animals, soft tissue preservation etc. Their reconstructions may not be 100% accurate (that’s what the rest of All Yesterdays is about, exploring the few areas about dinosaurs which scientists wouldn’t know a whole lot about) but it is still very close to how dinosaurs would have actually looked.

One of my biology teachers says that this is precisely why there are different subjects that study archeology, biology and the like; precisely so that when reconstructing animals from their fossils we do not end up making a creature taken from the imagination.

Fascinating!

5:55 I feel proud of myself for getting real the animal for this one before it was shown

"Did you know dinosaurs had big ears, but everyone forgot because dinosaur ears don't have bones? It's a ROCK FACT!" --Greg

I have a few issues with these illustrations, mainly that it implies that there’s no possible way to tell what structures an animal might have from other structures. Especially with noses. As someone who’s worked with skulls, I can tell what type of nose an animal has from the skull alone. The extent that the nasal bone covers the sinuses is a huge indicator. The moose, for example, has very short nasal bones, which allows for more movement; a trait usually seen in animals with large noses (tapirs, elephants, saigas, etc.). There are some ways to extrapolate to a degree.

thanks to your video, no future scientist is going to miss interpret these animals.

The humming bird wouldn't be mistaken or anything other that what it is they have very clearly evolved to fly with holo bones and strong muscle anchors on the lower abdemine along with the different shaped beaks that humming birds have base on the most common flowers in their region.

Alien: *sees quills on a porcupine fossil* "these must have supported a membrane used in flight"

9:04 the video you have there is not of a snake, but a legless lizard. Yeah there’s such things as them, I can tell because the tongue is not forked, and it has eyelids. Legless lizards are basically lizards that saw snakes and were like “oh cool I wanna do that too” so they evolved the lack of legs and sorta tried to be snakes. From what I understand, they don’t/can’t swallow their food whole though. Edit: they’re also really bad at moving. They still run like they got legs but they don’t so they just like shimmy like crazy and hope they move. They’re probably better at moving when they’re on debris and grass, but videos of them on concrete and chaotic

This is really cool as a thought experiment. Makes you realize how easy it could be to misinterpret ancient fossils and skeletons based purely on bones and teeth found.

Just two small errors that I've noticed; the animal at 9:02 isn't a snake, it's a legless lizard known as a slow worm: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Anguis At 9:08 that isn't a squamate at all; it's an eel: en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spotted_snake-eel

Imagine we finally successfully develop time travel, and when we go back to prehistoric eras we find out that our guesses about those animals were completely wrong the whole time

"Hummingbirds are so innocent looking, it's hard to imagine anyone interpreting this animal as anything frightening." Anyone who has done research on hummingbirds would know just how brutal these things are in the war for nectar.

“New study suggests that the parasitic hummingbird may have actually fed on nectar from flowers.”

The hummingbird and the cow were the two I could guess before they were revealed. 😂 Crazy. Great vid.

It's scary that prehistoric animals that we have never seen may have looked completely unrecognizable to what we think they looked like

That rendition of a house cat is absolutely what house cats think of themselves.

9:03 is actually a lizard, Anguis fragilis (slow worm). Often confused with snakes as they don't have legs, but come from a completely different lineage. Unlike snakes they have eyelids and a notched rather than forked tongue. They can also drop their tails to escape predators.

Civilizations of the far far future envisioning present animals in horrific ways just by the fossil records they're gonna leave alone is such a creepy yet intriguing concept I've unfortunately never thought of... But will always think of, from now on.

Feathers are not always preserved but quill knobs are, mostly. It's only a matter of figuring out what those are. Even if feathers become extinct in the future there will be some available in the fossil records. From there on, it won't be so hard to recreate hornbills reasonably correctly.

The thing about the zebra ridiculously having single-toed feet in the artwork is itself ridiculous, since zebras do exactly have single-toed feet.

This actually raises questions about how paleontologists represent dinosaurs.

The funniest thing is that the description given to hippos isn't ACTUALLY that far off.

The hummingbird part is missing a detail about how the beaks are used for gathering nectar, they are also used to fight off other hummingbirds

For the snake skeleton specifically: some modern snakes do have vestigial legs, i.e. leftover bones that don't serve a purpose, so those would show in the fossil record!

The snake one might make sense, but once(if) they find snakes with vestigial limbs they might start to realize their mistake.

Cool concept, even if like some people pointed out, you'd be able to get a more accurate image than what is depicted

This needs more attention.

Literally have been thinking about this exact idea for months now.

I want to note that we know a lot more about paleontology with new discoveries, phylogenetic research and better techniques regarding the placement of soft tissues. Velociraptor had wings, T. rex would be a chunky dinosaur, sauropods have air sacs etc.

Discovered this story today. Read twice. Kinda obsessed with it.

People are overblowing this “feather” thing on hornbills. Saying they were COMPLETELY covered is ridiculous! Besides it makes them all look fluffy and cute, so inacurate too.

So many of these were just downright creepy looking, but then there was the adorable, huge-headed manatee lion just looking like a derp at 5:24

Our version of the Sabre tooth tiger is definitely an error

8:55 i wouldn't be suprised if something similar actually exist since theres so many extinct animals we don't know But that snake interpretation is so cool

Am I the only one who was hoping to see these hypothetical future paleontologists' interpretation of how humans looked like?

I can only imagine how this guy would misinterpret a human fossil

Loved this vid!!