Humans have inhabited this planet for hundreds of thousands of years, and yet, there are still so many natural mysteries out there for us to explore and discover to this day, especially for the ordinary person like you and me that doesn’t really get to go on scientific expeditions and all sorts of dangerous quests very often. So let’s expand our knowledge of nature together through these 16 unbelievable photos that showcase some of the strangest, coolest and creepiest things there is to know about nature, in our humble opinion.
1. A shark surrounded by an enormous school of small fish
2. Spiderweb-covered trees in a Pakistani village in 2010 after a flood drew all spiders into tall trees
3. If not sick or injured, sharks just continue growing. This Greenland shark found in the Atlantic ocean is 392 years old, and it's 5.5 meters (18 feet) long
4. Wow! A 54 million-year-old gecko trapped in amber
5. These are so-called 'ghost apples'. Essentially, this is an ice cast of a long-decayed and fallen apple that can form in extended low temperatures
6. This Irish fisherman found a skull of a 10,000-year-old extinct giant elk species
7. This rare atmospheric phenomenon was documented in Singapore and is called 'Rainbow Bridge' or 'Fire Rainbow'. Scientists aren't sure why it occurs, but they believe it's sunlight reflecting from ice-crystal clouds
8. A giant piece of yellow quartz
9. Is this a dragon? Nope, but The Borneo earless monitor sure does resemble a real-life dragon! Well, a tiny baby dragon, to be more precise, as these reptiles don't get longer than 22 cm (8.7 in)
10. Unbelievable! This is how the skeleton of a freshwater stingray looks like
11. A red jellyfish lightning sprite. These incredible rounded light explosions are typically very large, spanning over 48x48 km (30x30 miles)
12. This mysterious rock rising above water looks just like a giant prehistoric shark
13. Numerous fossils of giant prehistoric whales can be found in the so-called Whale Valley in the Egyptian desert. These animals lived here millions of years ago
14. A frozen rock that bears an incredible resemblance to the human heart, but much, much bigger
15. For once, we're glad that a species has gone extinct. These are the remains of an enormous snake that used to live in northeastern Colombia fittingly named Titanoboa. The monstrosity reached a length of 12.8 m (42 ft) and weighed 1,135 kg (2,502 lbs)
16. Let's finish this article with something less threatening and more beautiful, like the Heavenly Pit (The Xiaozhai Tiankeng), the world's deepest sinkhole that's as deep as 662 m (2,172 ft) in certain areas. Utterly beautiful, especially for a sinkhole!
