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Otters have existed on earth for 30 million years. 30 000 000 years, or 30 000 millenia.
That's 150 times longer than humans are known to have existed.
If you count the early otterish mammals, then that's 150 million (150 000 000) years of otters, or 750 times the human existence.
In other words, if otters had existed for 1000 years, we would have been here for about 1.3 years.
Otters are pretty long.
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And in all this time, they've always been doing the same things. No improvement is ever needed.
Another comparison:
If otters had existed for a day, we would have existed for less than two minutes.
30 million years.
3 million generations.
All this time to eat delicious snacks, roll around in the grass, slide in the snow, play with rocks, and swim in pristine waters.
They've perfected their craft
What were the earliest otterish mammals?
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That'd be guys like this
New look, same taste
It's not the same as an otter. But it definitely rhymes.
Small and pointy!
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Like an otter shrew (Yes that's a real animal)
These are some wacky looking otters
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Speaking of older otters, I recently learned that there were once lion-sized otters! Giant otters are certainly big boys, but these otts must have really been something else!
https://www.livescience.com/lion-sized-otter-unearthed-ethiopia
Were there also giant fish back then? It seems everything was big back then...
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I suppose that there must have been. I'm far from an expert, but if predators can get that big, it must mean that there was some hefty prey out there to be eaten.
Apparently they mostly ate land based prey, very strange otters to not be in the water but also equally interesting to learn about. What a different world we would live in if terrestrial otters were the norm.
Definitely, but I suppose that, for the creatures living back then, that was normal. So maybe they'd see our watery otters and think we're the strange ones!
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