Adventure Quest

08/20/2025

Adventure Quest has many fascinating and engaging classroom presentations for Nature Education available. Schedule your classroom for a presentation today!

Bats, arachnids, butterflies, adaptations, nature’s creepiest, skulls and skins, and more!

08/18/2025

A slide from our presentation, Amazing Arachnids! One of many classroom presentations available for nature education!

08/10/2025

08/09/2025

What if a raptor as big as a car once prowled the ancient floodplains of South Dakota

Meet Dakotaraptor steini, one of the most fearsome predators of the Late Cretaceous. Living around 66 million years ago in what is now North America, this massive feathered dinosaur roamed the Hell Creek Formation just before the extinction event that ended the age of the dinosaurs. At up to six metres long and weighing around 300 to 350 kilograms, Dakotaraptor wasn’t just big, it was powerful, agile, and terrifyingly fast.

This raptor had long legs built for running, a stiff tail for balance, and enormous sickle-shaped claws on its feet, measuring up to 24 centimetres. These claws weren’t just for show. They were hunting tools, perfect for slashing, gripping, and taking down prey. The creature’s bones show quill k***s, a feature that confirms the presence of large feathers. While it couldn't fly, these feathers may have helped with maneuvering during high-speed chases or added balance while grappling prey.

Unlike the smaller Velociraptor made famous by movies, Dakotaraptor was much larger and possibly smarter. Some fossil finds suggest it may have moved in small groups, although whether it hunted cooperatively remains a topic of debate. It likely preyed on smaller dinosaurs, juvenile hadrosaurs, and perhaps even scavenged kills made by larger predators like Tyrannosaurus rex.

Its sleek build, strong muscles, and aerodynamic form made it one of the top predators of its environment. With hollow bones that kept it light on its feet, and sharp, curved claws built for combat, Dakotaraptor was the perfect blend of speed, strength, and stealth.

Strange fact: Despite being one of the largest raptors ever discovered, Dakotaraptor's claw was nearly a third the length of its thigh bone, a proportion unmatched in any other dromaeosaurid, making its foot a weapon of almost surgical precision.

Follow The PreHistoric World to uncover more untold stories from Earth’s ancient past. Share this post with someone who still thinks raptors were only the size of turkeys.

08/09/2025

What if Earth has been carrying the remains of another planet deep inside it for over 4.5 billion years?

Beneath Africa and the Pacific Ocean lie two massive, mysterious structures embedded near the Earth’s core. These colossal formations, known as large low shear velocity provinces, are unlike anything else inside our planet. They are hotter, denser, and larger than entire continents. And now, scientists believe they might be fragments of an ancient world that once collided with Earth.

This theory leads us back to the birth of the Moon. Around 4.5 billion years ago, a Mars-sized planetary body named Theia slammed into the early Earth. The force of the impact was so powerful that it likely vaporised both planets' crusts, sending debris into space that eventually formed our Moon. But not all of Theia may have escaped. Some of it may have sunk into Earth’s mantle, becoming these gigantic deep-Earth blobs that still remain hidden today.

One of these structures beneath Africa stretches thousands of kilometres across and reaches nearly 800 kilometres tall. That’s taller than 90 Mount Everests stacked on top of each other. What makes it even more fascinating is that it affects how seismic waves travel through Earth during earthquakes. That means it is still interacting with Earth’s interior after billions of years.

If this theory is correct, then these structures are not just part of Earth's geology. They are part of another world. A world that no longer exists, except buried within our own.

This discovery challenges how we see our planet. Earth’s inner layers may hold the history of a long-lost planet that merged with us during the violent early days of the solar system. It turns out, our planet’s story is not just about what happened on the surface, but also what it swallowed long ago.

Here’s a strange but true fact to leave you with Some scientists believe these buried alien remnants may have played a role in major volcanic hotspots, including the one beneath Yellowstone.

Follow PreHistoric World for more ancient discoveries that shape the way we see Earth’s past. If this story shook your view of our planet, don’t forget to share.

07/30/2025

🔥 This is the TRILOBITE BEETLE — a bug that looks straight out of prehistory!

Its armored body looks more like a fossil than a living insect.
And here’s the weird part: only the females look like this!

✨ Fun Fact: Males are tiny, can fly, and look completely different — for years, scientists didn’t even realize they were the same species!

📸: unknown

07/29/2025

So lucky to catch this on film in Upper Bidwell Park!! Wait until near the end… April Mangino is the videographer

07/27/2025

https://www.facebook.com/photo.php?fbid=675408695535645&set=a.566076796468836&type=3&mibextid=wwXIfr

It looks like a hummingbird… but it’s not even close.

Perched delicately on a human fingertip is the Hummingbird Hawk-Moth (Macroglossum stellatarum), a marvel of mimicry in motion. With clear wings, a hovering flight style, and a blur of movement, it fools even the sharpest eye into thinking it’s a bird sipping nectar.

But this is an insect — a moth with the heart of a jet.

Its long proboscis acts like a straw, reaching deep into flowers. Its wings beat so fast you can hear them buzz. And despite its delicate frame, this creature is a long-distance flyer, capable of migrating across continents.

Evolution didn’t just give it beauty. It gave it camouflage, efficiency, and surprise.

🧠 Fun fact: This moth can remember flower locations and feeding times — just like bees and birds — showing remarkable spatial memory for an insect.

07/23/2025

https://www.livescience.com/animals/land-mammals/return-of-wolves-to-yellowstone-has-led-to-a-surge-in-aspen-trees-unseen-for-80-years

Gray wolves were reintroduced in Yellowstone National Park in 1995 to help control the numbers of elk that were eating young trees, and it is finally paying off for quaking aspen.

07/14/2025

A trio of adventurers completed a truly EPIC Quest for a magical SWORD! Contact us and let us send you on your own incredible adventure!

&d

04/30/2025

04/12/2025

When in 1995 fourteen wolves were released into the wild in Yellowstone National Park, scientists did not suspect that this would radically change the entire ecosystem of the park.
There were no wolves in the park for 70 years, and all this time deer reigned there, which over the years of uncontrolled reproduction (all the efforts of people to control their population did not bring success) caused severe damage to the local flora. Fourteen wolves, of course, could not eat all the deer, but they forced those to be more careful in choosing places for pastures and to avoid certain parts of the park. In those places, vegetation began to revive. In six years, the number of trees has increased fivefold. Beavers have appeared, which need trees to build dams. Muskrats, ducks and fish have been bred in the backwaters. Wolves reduced the population of jackals, which led to an increase in the number of hares and mice, and they attracted hawks, ferrets and foxes to the park. The bears came to the park because they were able to drive the wolves away from their prey or eat up their scraps. The number of berries has increased in the park.
But the most amazing thing is that the wolves have changed the flow of rivers. Their channels straightened and stabilized, and coastal erosion decreased. This happened because the influence of wolves on deer led to the explosive growth of trees and grass along the banks of the rivers, which led to their strengthening. The very geography of the park has changed, and all thanks to the fourteen wolves released there less than twenty years ago