#577 Skull Hunt

 Fun Fact #577

Skull Hunt

Today our story begins with the mysterious murder of one John Foulis, a doctor who lived on Lord Howe Island. He had moved to the island in 1841, before quickly finding the horned skull of an ancient Turtle of unknown origin. He quickly reported this but it fell upon deaf ears until he was found dead and The Skull was missing leaving only sketches behind. 

A Team of scientists on the ship Thetis came to investigate the murder and quickly found that the island was a cashless society. It wasn’t long before they discovered that the Skull had been traded to an outsider, but without knowing the ship’s heading the Skull was unrecoverable. Yet since they were on the island anyways they decided to poke around, quickly finding more bones at the site Foulis’ notes had mentioned finding the skull. First officially described by Richard Owens, This Turtle is known today as Meiolania.

Meiolania was around 6ft, 7 inches in average length, and is thought to have lived similar to modern Tortises. However unlike modern tortoises, it not only had a hard outer shell but a bony and horned head, and a large armored tail ending in a spiky club. Lastly it’s range is thought to have encompassed the entirety of the continent of Zealandia before it (mostly) sunk 79 million years ago leaving New Zealand as the largest chunk left above water which explains why almost every island where Megalania fossils are found seem to have a different subspecies. This is part of why most of its history in the fossil record is surrounded by bickering scientists who seem to just love finding hills to die on for these conversations. 

This in turn led The New Zealand Scientific community to invent a joke that arguing for Megalania must be the initiation ritual into the secretive “Turtle club”. In fact the joke origins around this fictional group is that it must have been formed by the original scientists investigating Foulis’ murder and have been hunting for the missing skull ever since.