Titanomyrma (Giant ant)

I was recently reminded of the importance of conflict resolution when my housemate and I had such a blazing row that a week later I am still in duck and cover position in the corner of my living room, removing shrapnel from my hair. Like many other fighting homo sapiens, we'd have been wise to learn from Dorylus Molestus, which despite having a latin name that sounds like an allegation against your grandma, is in fact a living genus of east African army ants. So wise is Dorylus that when two colonies of the same species meet, they usually change marching direction to avoid conflicts. Dorylus are the largest known extant ant species, with the queen growing to a whopping 8 centimeters.

The discovery of a similarly-sized 50 million year old queen ant fossil raised eyebrows due to its enormous size  and because it was found in Wyoming. Like Dorylus, the now-named Titanomyrma could grow up to 8 centimetres in length, and so is comparable size-wise to that of a modern hummingbird:

How giant ants ended up in both North America and Europe is the big question, and to find the answer we have to look again at the changing climates of the Eocene epoch in the Paleogene period. The hyperthermals were geologically brief periods of global warming 55.5 - 52 million years ago caused by a massive carbon release from thawing permafrost. This caused many ice free land bridges between Europe and North America, which allowed different animal and plant species to cross.over.  Titanomyrma would have crossed over in this period, and  its discovery in Wyoming tells us that Wyoming in the early Eocene had a climate similar to that of East Africa today.

Anthropornis Penguin

Whether it's the online videos of them slipping and sliding all over the Antartic, or just their comical way of waddling around, penguins are one of nature's most popular animals, enjoying the sort of celebrity status that hippos used to have, before everyone realised that hippos are actually extremely aggressive (see also: Bill Cosby)

But whilst modern penguins are certifiably fun for Planet Earth - with an added cute factor that many of them mate for life - there's something a little less Disney about the Anthropornis penguin, a terrifyingly giant penguin that lived during the late Eocene epoch in the Paleogene period 37-45 million years ago. Fossil discoveries - including a 9cm tarsometatarsus (a bone found only in the lower leg of birds) suggest that this bird could have measured anywhere between 5.5 - 6.5 feet tall. By comparison, Emperor penguins are the tallest of the living penguin genus, at 3.5 feet tall.

I would love to be able to press a button and have a couple of hundred Anthropornis penguins come back to life and just waddle around, trying to inconspicuously blend into our crowd scenes. And seeing as they would have matched us at head height, a homo sapien vs anthropornis basketball match would make for interesting viewing.