Welcome to Stuff to Blow Your Mind, a production of My Heart Radio. Hi, my name is Robert Lamb and this is the Monster Fact, a short form series from Stuff to Blow Your Mind, focusing in on mythical creatures, ideas and monsters in time. This week, with the help of my son's Sebastian, I'd like to return to the
world of Pokemon. This week, we're looking at Dreepy Sebastian, would you tell us a little bit about drea by three by the Lingering Pokemon, a dragon in ghost set found in the Gallery Regions blowing its rebirth as a ghost, Pokemon threeb wanders the areas that used to inhabit when it thrived in prehistoric seas, Notable for its boomerang shaped head. Dreapy a bolsh Into jac and Jack a pool un evolved. Dreapy actually served as companions to are the loc and jackapoard.
During battle. The Dragonpolt even launches some out of hors on its horns like missiles. Don't worry thing of it. Sebastian's primary source here was Pokemon dot Com, but I also looked at some of the facts that are presented in the Pokemon Super Extra Deluxe Essential Handbook. The interesting thing about dreepies design is that this prehistoric pokemon is clearly modeled after a very real prehistoric amphibian that lived during the Late Carboniferous to the Late Permian, the diplocalis.
They were Lepo spond ali, notable for their salamander like bodies, eel like tail, and bizarre boomerang shaped skulls with tabular horns. Hypotheses regarding the function of these strange heads very greatly. The various hypotheses include that they may have been used for external gill protection, as a counterweight, as a skin
flap to support ray like morphology and locomotion. Uh they might have been used as a burrowing tool, a respiration aid, a defense structure to keep the diplocalis from being swallowed alive by predators. And there's also the hypothesis that it may have functioned as a hydrofoil for navigating in the water.
These various interpretations provide different possible snapshots of the three point three foot long or one meter long creature as both a predator careening through the water column for prey, but also as a prey species itself. Narrowly avoiding the gullet of larger predatory creatures by simply presenting too weirdly
shaped a mouthful. The Diplocalis is so strange looking in fact, that it has burrowed its way into the world of cryptozoology, with the occasional video and photo hoax or misinterpretation suggesting that the creature may still be alive in our world despite going extinct at least two hundred and seventy million years ago. Thanks again to Sebastian for helping me out with this one. Tune in for additional episodes all of
the Monster Fact each week. As always, you can email us at contact at stuff to Blow your Mind dot com. Stuff to Blow Your Mind is a production of I Heart Radio. For more podcasts for my heart Radio, visit the I heart Radio app, Apple Podcasts, or wherever you listen to your favorite shows.