Given that Africa is the cradle of humanity, it totally makes sense that it would also be the place where some the world’s largest sea creatures hail from. The excerpt below from the Guardian reveals that the Sahara was home to some of the world’s largest sea creatures. Enjoy!
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Scientists reconstruct extinct species using fossils found in northern Mali from ancient seaway
Some of the biggest catfish and sea snakes to ever exist lived in what is today the Sahara desert, according to a new paper that contains the first reconstructions of extinct aquatic species from the ancient Trans-Saharan Seaway.
The sea was 50 metres deep and once covered 3,000 sq km of what is now the world’s biggest sand desert. The marine sediment it left behind is filled with fossils, which allowed the scientists who published the study to build up a picture of a region that teemed with life.
Between 100 m and 50 m years ago, today’s arid, boulder-strewn northern Mali “looked more like modern Puerto Rico”; the sun shone on some of the earliest mangroves, and molluscs lined the shallow seabed, according to Maureen O’Leary, the palaeontologist who led the study.
The study also formally named the geological units, literally putting the area on the geological map for the first time, showing how the sea ebbed and flowed over its 50 m years of existence, and building up information about the K-Pg boundary, the geophysical marker of one of Earth’s five major extinction events, in which the non-avian dinosaurs became extinct.
With 1.6 m catfish, 12.3 m sea snakes and 1.2 m pycnodonts – a type of bony fish – O’Leary and the other scientists developed the idea that in the late Cretaceous and early Paleogene period, the animals were experiencing gigantism.
Evolutionary biologists have long talked about the phenomenon of island gigantism, where species that live on small islands can sometimes develop very large bodies, possibly because they have more resources or there are few predators, or both.
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African Heritage 
I am using the forum to get some truth about some information I was blessed to acquire about and article I read about the French colonial past and present in Africa. I was informed that about 14 former French colonial colonies in Africa are forced by the French government to pay colonial taxes to to France which continues to this present day. Could you cast some light on this for me please? I know this may not be the forum for such topics but I no other media to do so, Thanks.
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It is. Please check the article:
The 11 Components of the French Colonial Tax in Africa: https://afrolegends.com/2019/08/16/the-11-components-of-the-french-colonial-tax-in-africa-2/
and do a search for FCFA on the blog, there are a lot more articles on the subject.
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Oh, wow! I would’ve never guessed any of that about Mali. I thought it was mostly desert since day 1, but I was certainly mistaken.
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Aren’t we all…? Yes, it was a lush green area… hard to believe today right?
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Yeah, that was certainly a surprise to say the least and I certainly agree. Now it kind of makes me wonder about the movie Yeelen which takes place in pre-colonial Mali and there was certainly some greenery in portions of the movie before the desert shows up (I’m avoiding spoilers).
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ha ha ha … yes it does… and indeed it was green. thanks for sharing.
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Sure thing. You’ve seen Yeelen before?
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I believe so… I need to check though.
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Okay. I was just curious. That was the first Malian movie I ever saw and I also reviewed it as part of my geography goal.
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