YoungestPaleoartists

Something I've been thinking of: Does it ever bother you when you consider the fact that, given the specificity of conditions required for fossilization, and the brutal geological processes that can destroy the few instances of it that occur, the vast majority of organisms that have graced this planet will remain forever lost and unknown to us? I know we're extremely lucky to have any fossils at all, that the knowledge they give us is copious and invaluable, and that it would be very dull to know everything about every organism to have lived, but it still bites me that there may well have been organisms as beautiful, enigmatic and magnifice

So, you may remember a journal I wrote back in May promoting a Quora answer of mine. It was on the intelligence of (Western) cave hyenas, or Ice age spotted hyenas (Crocuta crocuta spelaea) - the variety that inhabited Europe and Southern Siberia during the Pleistocene. That answer actually became pretty popular, and was featured on one of Quora's weekly digest e-mails. My logic therein was that, since Cave hyenas and modern spotted ones were the same species, and that the evidence suggests that they were similar in terms of their denning and social behaviour and sexual dimorphism to their modern kin, they should be as intelligent as them,