10 Pre-Historic Creatures More Terrifying Than Dinosaurs

People love dinosaurs.
From the T-Rex to the Triceratops, there’s just something about giant lizard monsters
that we can’t get enough of.
But as cool as everyone’s favourite reptiles were, prehistoric times had some epic non-dino
animals that don’t get the attention they deserve.
And that’s why we’re here.
From colossal killer scorpions to real life sea monsters, here are 10 prehistoric creatures
more terrifying than dinosaurs...
10) Titanoboa I don’t care what your weird friend with
the tattoos and the death wish says: snakes are not cuddly, friendly, or misunderstood.
There’s a reason that the most famous snakes in fiction are the one that tried to eat Mogli,
the one that hung out with Voldemort, and the one that was literally the devil..
And that’s because snakes are terrifying.
None more so than the gigantic titanoboa.
This monstrosity was 14 metres long, weighed a tonne, and survived by killing crocodiles
and swallowing them whole.
If you want a sense of how big this thing was, look at this picture and then realise
that that model is out of date, and paleontologists now think it was two metres bigger than that.
Like a modern day boa constrictor, this snake didn’t poison its prey, but rather wrapped
around anything it could catch and crushed it to death.
The titanoboa could apply a force of 180 kilograms per square inch, twice that of the Brooklyn
bridge.
Most badass of all, the titanoboa managed to survive the meteorite that wiped out the
dinosaurs, living for another few thousand years afterwards.
You know something's terrifying when even natural disasters don’t want to mess with
it.
9) Megalodon If watching trashy Sci-fi Channel movies has
taught me anything, it’s that sharks can always be more awesome.
I mean Great Whites are fine and all, but how about combining them with an octopus?
Or robotics?
Or a tornado that launches them at D-list celebrities?
Well Mother Nature has already done what no cheesy Sci-Fi film had the budget to do, and
made a shark over 18 metres long.
The megalodon is believed to have prowled the seas around 23 million years ago.
With 17 centimetre teeth and a bite twice as strong as a T-Rex’s, the megalodon could
hunt even the biggest prey.
In fact, experts believe it would regularly attack and consume whales.
I guess there’s no skipping carbs when you need to maintain an average weight of 50 tonnes.
To put in context just how big the megalodon was, a large great white sharks reaches only
about four metres in length and weighs a puny 1000 kilograms.
Hell, the biggest living shark is the tiger shark.
And that can only grow to around 12 metres long.
If the Megalodon was around today, it would dominate the ocean.
Even if a Great White tried to stand one down, it would look like a guy in green bodypaint
trying to fighting the Hulk.
8) Gigantopithecus Continuing with our theme of taking the most
dangerous predators on earth and super sizing them, we present to you: the gigantopithecus.
Looking like an orangutan that started lifting, the gigantopithecus is the largest ape to
have ever walked the earth.
At 3 metres tall, and weighing over 500 kilograms, males were twice the height of gorillas and
four times as heavy.
Though experts don’t know exactly how strong the gigantopithecus was, its descendent the
orangutan is seven times as strong as a human.
And that’s ignoring that the gigantopithecus has a solid 400 kilograms on an orangutan.
In fact, the gigantopithecus was so large that scientists believe its mere size is what
killed it.
The ancient ape had to maintain its King Kong like heft eating only berries and bamboo.
Gorillas have to eat 30 kilograms of food a day.
And considering this thing makes gorillas look like Kate Moss, its not all that surprising
there was a food shortage, one that all but wiped out the gigantopithecus.
7) Gorgonopsids Scientists describe the Gorgonopsid as a “stem
mammal”, or a “mammal-like reptile”.
But we’ll just call it what it really is: a bear-sized murder lizard.
Forgotten for millennia, this prehistoric predator had a resurgence of popularity after
featuring on Walking With Monsters and Primeval.
And it deserves it.
The gorgonopsid was the dominant hunter of the Permian period in 289 millin BCE, and
spent 46 million years as the most terrifying creature on earth.
This skilled killer had fangs 12 cm long, longer than even a T-Rex’s teeth.
These banana size mouth blades were frequently sunk into small dinosaurs like the scutosaurus,
which the gorgonopsid was able to ambush.
Some sub-species of gorgonopsids are even thought to have reached the size of rhinos.
If they were around today, these beasts would be the largest carnivores on land.
Luckily they aren’t around today, and we have the Permian-Triassic extinction to thank.
Around 252 million years BCE, a series of volcanic eruptions bathed 2 million square
kilometres of land in lava and the gorgonopsids died, along with 70% of the species on Earth.
6) Jaekelopterus gee-klopterus Scorpions are armoured bugs with pincers at
the front and a poisonous tail at the back.
There’s really not much good to say about them.
But at least it our time they don’t grow beyond about 20 centimetres.
That wasn’t the case during the prehistoric era, when the jaekelopterus was scuttling
around in riverbeds.
Hell, its pincers alone were more than double the size of modern scorpions, and could slice
fish in clean in two.
At two and a half metres long, the jaekelopterus dwarfs the largest bugs today.
Also, people.
This thing was bigger than people.
When not crawling around in your nightmares, the jaekelopterus was not above a bit of casual
cannibalism.
In fact eating each other was a staple part of their diet.
And that’s not all prehistory had in terms of behemoth bugs.
Dragonflies back then were more dragon than fly, with wingspans of 75 centimeters.
Snails were 60 centimetres long and spiders had legs that spanned 15 centimetres.
Even millipedes got the giant treatment.
The arthropleura could grow to be waaaay bigger than humans.
Yep, pre-history was so full-on insane that even millepedes were terrifying.
5) Entelodont 160 Considering I’ve already shown you giant
river-scorpions, Nagini on steroids, and a real life yeti: a primeval warthog probably
doesn’t sound that scary.
But just look at this thing…
That monstrosity is called the ‘Entelodont’, which is latin for Never Getting Laid.
Probably...
Okay, it’s actually latin for “dreadful teeth”, although most paleontologists genuinely
call them either “hell pigs” or “terminator pigs” As awesome as those names are, they’re
actually inaccurate.
Despite looking like Pumba’s evil twin, the entelodont is actually more closely related
to the modern day hippo.
A scavenger, the entelodont would ravage corpses up and down the prehistoric landscape, using
its “dreadful teeth” to clean off the rotting bodies.
Its jaws were also powerful enough to crush thick dinosaurs bones if needed.
And, in an amazingly petty act of douchebaggery, if a bigger predator came along and forced
it off the kill, the Entelodont had a back-up plan.
It would...ur….
relieve itself all over the food, ensuring no-one could enjoy it.
4) Liopleuroden 197 If you Google Image “Liopleurodon”, literally
the first things that show up are paintings of it murdering fish and fighting demons.
That... pretty much sets the tone for this ridiculous sea monster.
Looking like someone slapped a crocodile’s head on a killer whale, the Liopleurodon was
a 10 metre long oceanic killing machine, and the top predator of its age.
It’s massive mouth, which made up roughly a quarter of its body, wasn’t just for giving
giant smiles either.
The liopleurodon had a bite four times stronger than that of the T-Rex, which in turn had
a bite nearly 40 times stronger than a nile crocodile.
The thing could have bitten through a car and not even blinked.
Unfortunately no dinosaurs bothered to invent the car, so this monster’s diet instead
consisted of squid, crocodiles, and other aquatic reptiles.
With its nose able to smell prey from 16 kilometres away, the Liopleurodon would stalk prey from
afar.
Then it would use its impressive sprint of 35 kilometres per hour to ambush victims and
crush them it its jaws.
Although, to be fair if you manage to get ambushed by something the size of a truck,
it’s kind of on you.
3) Quetzalcoatlus 182 In Aztec mythology, quetzalcoatl was a feathered
serpent god who drunkenly slept with his sister and then set himself on fire out of shame.
Or as i call it, a Friday night.
That may be a pretty weird story.
But the real pterodactyl named after the God of Sister-banging was just as crazy.
The quetzalcoatlus was 10 metres tall, and had a wingspan of 11 metres.
That’s over three times the size of an albatross’ wings, and comfortably the largest natural
wings to ever exist.
It’s so large that, to this day, paleontologists have no idea how it was able to fly.
Simply put, its bones don’t seem strong enough to make something the size of a bus
fly.
Yet fly it did, and fast.
The quetzalcoatlus could reach 170 kilometres an hour, allowing it to easily dive bomb small
dinosaurs and mammals.
The quetzalcoatlus’ top speed would make it the fifth fastest bird in the world today.
And before you jump to the comment section, no pterodactyls weren’t dinosaurs.
If you want more on why not, check out our video on 10 Lies You Still Believe About Dinosaurs.
2) Sabre Toothed Tiger 181 Imagine having one body part so deadly that
paleontologists had no choice but to name your species after it.
That’s like calling crabs “scissor-hands” or narwhals “stab-faces”.
Yet that’s exactly what happened to the Smilodon, better known as the sabre-toothed
tiger.
The smilodon lived at the same time as mammoths, 12-foot bears, and real Game of Thrones direwolves.
But despite existing in an ecosystem that sounds more like a battle royale than a real
historical period, the the Sabre-toothed tiger was an apex predator.
That means it had no natural predators, mainly because messing with a sabre-toothed tiger
meant being holepunched by its two massive fangs.
Although slightly smaller than a modern day lion, the Smilodon was more muscular.
In fact, individual smilodons were powerful enough to hunt deer, bison and even rhinos.
While most big cats will bite through the throats of their prey, the sabre-tooth had
two main methods of execution.
One was to stab something in the back of the neck, and then use its brute strength to break
the victims neck.
The other was just to use its 28 centimetre teeth to slice apart victims piece by piece.
Bigger animals couldn’t relax around a smilodon either.
As if they weren’t badass enough on their own, some paleontologists believe that they
hunted in packs.
The same scientists argue that, as a team, a pride of sabre-tooths could even take down
mammoths.
1) Mosasaurus As I was saying earlier, our civilisation
has a bit of an obsession with sharks.
And why not?
Sharks have razor-sharp teeth, empty soulless eyes, and the ability to hunt by smelling
blood.
They’re essentially real life vampires that didn’t scrimp on swimming lessons.
So imagine how obsessive we’d all be if the mosasaurus was still around.
After all, this thing literally ate sharks for breakfast.
In fact, at 17 metres long, the mosasaurus pretty much ate whatever it wanted.
Everything from sharks, to turtles, to plesiosaurs ended up in its jaws.
The Mosasaurus swam onto the scene in around 70 million BCE, and immediately replaced the
Liopleurodon as the ocean’s top predator.
Yep, this thing was so deadly it picked a fight with something that was 25% teeth and
won.
To make them even more terrifying, scientists believe that the mosasaurus had counter-shading.
To those of you not cool enough to be up to speed on the terminology of paleo-oceanic
biology, countershading is basically natural camouflage that makes fish harder to spot
in the water.
Unsurprisingly, no other fish were willing to pick on invisible sea monsters the length
of bowling alleys.
The Mosasorus came to dominate the oceans, being found as far apart as as Africa, America
and Antarctica.
So, that was 10 prehistoric creatures more terrifying than dinosaurs.
Which ancient animal would you least like to face?
Did we leave any petrifying prehistoric predators off the list?
Let us know in the comments below.
And if you want to learn more about the dino era, be sure to check out 10 Lies About Dinosaurs
You Still Believe, playing onscreen.
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10 Pre-Historic Creatures More Terrifying Than Dinosaurs

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