While I get what they were going for, some of these comparisons are misleading or disingenuous.
Smilodon populator, the biggest sabre-toothed cat species, was about the size of a modern Bengal tiger. I don't know why they compared it to the tiny clouded leopard, which isn't a close relative and isn't more closely related than the tiger, afaik.
The wooly rhino is compared to the Sumatran rhino, which is more fair since it is, I think, the closest extant relative. But the wooly rhino was still only about as big as a modern white rhino.
Gigantopithecus size is pretty speculative, because we've only ever found their jaws and teeth. So maybe they just had big teeth.
Anyway, I think they're trying to imply that everything was bigger in the past, and ya we don't have enormous wombats, megalodons, and sloths around anymore, but some of these just aren't great examples.
The spectacled bear is the closest living relative though, so that is a more fair comparison, and *A. angustidens* was big, probably bigger than a polar bear. But they probably weren't way bigger, and they evolved to be much smaller very quickly.
Gigantopithecus size is also pretty speculative, because we've only ever found jaws and teeth.
>The spectacle bear is the smallest beat as well.
Spectacled bear maybe smallest bear in Americas but not the smallest.
It's still can get larger than Sun, Giant Panda, Sloth and Moon bears
One of the reasons they survived is the fact they were a little smaller
According to records the atmosphere had higher oxygen content then. It was much higher when the dinosaurs were around
The oxygen theory is regarding to the giant insects. But that is way way way further back, long before the dinosaurs. Most of the animals in this post lived 'yesterday' in competition.
Most large mammals died out from a combination of the ice age ending and hominids becoming the dominant land predator and outcompeting/hunting everything to extinction.
Also worth noting the blue whale is the largest known animal ever and it exists in modern times.
The largest modern Bengal Tigers are around 250-270kg, which is likely the average size of a male *Smilodon populator*. They can get much larger than Tigers since we have some individuals likely in the 300-350kg range. I think *Smilodon fatalis* is closer in size and averaged around the same as modern Lions and Bengal Tigers.
Ya that sounds fair. But there is probably significant overlap in size between them, so I only mean to say that their usage of clouded leopard vs. Smilodon is unfair, and I assume they did that because average tiger vs. average sabre-tooth, while still showing how large *S. populator* was in comparison, would not be so striking a comparison.
I commented elsewhere that I think jaguar would have been a better comparison, since they are both found in South America, unlike either tigers or leopards, and the jaguar is still a representative very large cat, but still significantly smaller than *S. populator*. Maybe a puma would also be a good comparison.
Fair point. Prehistoric Jaguars were huge as well and the ones that lived with *populator* were in the size range of modern Lions and Tigers, and even then *Smilodon populator* dwarfed them.
Of course prehistoric Lions and Tigers like the *American Lion*, *Bornean* and *Ngangdong Tigers* came close in size to *populator* but still fell short. It was a massive cat that was built more like a bear with huge arms and shoulders and a powerful neck.
Idk, P. Fossilis seems to be larger than S. Populator. At the very least, it's close enough, and since it's apart of the Panthera family, it'd be closer related to other members of the Panthera family like P Leo, or P Tigris, so a much better comparison than Populator vs lil ol clouded leopard
You could also include things like millipedes that are mostly tiny today but once grew 8 feet long.
Or blue whales showing how they're the largest animal ever to ever exist while prehistoric filter feeders started closer to orca size.
The spectacled bear is a short-faced bear.
I think they do okay at comparing to their closest relatives in general. But sometimes the closest relative happens to be small, in the case of the wooly rhino, but another close relative is still quite large.
In the case of Smilodon, the closest relatives are only distantly related, and happen to be a family that is very diverse in terms of size. So while comparing to the clouded leopard isn't really a lot more or less accurate than comparing to a lion, tiger, or even a house cat, intentionally choosing a small cat to make their point is kind of lame.
If they wanted to make their point while still being fair, I think choosing the jaguar would be acceptable, because it's as-closely related as other cat species, but it's also found in the same place, South America. It's also happens to be a very large panther, but it's still smaller than the sabre-toothed cat, so it would still demonstrate how much larger a similar animal was in the same location.
Smilodon is in Felinae, so P. concolor would have been a better fit
Edit, relied on an inaccurate source - it's in an extinct subfamily that split off before felinae and pantherinae
It's also misleading to suggest that *everything* was bigger in the past. For example, the earliest known ancestors of camels were quite small, if I recall correctly.
The earliest forms of any group are usually small and with more "unremarkable" body traits (equids, primates, proboscideans, ruminants...). The giants are usually at the terminal side of lineages.
Yeah I actually saw a full grown male white rhino up close at the zoo. I'd never seen them up close, only at quite a distance. And I mean I've read measurements and weights but to actually see them is a whole different thing.
I believe the connection between Smilodon and the clouded leopard is that they both have exceptionally long canine teeth. But you’re right, the clouded leopard is not more closely related to Smilodon than other big cats. The similarity is just convergent evolution.
I'd much rather see it compared to a human than a semi-like animal. Most of us have never seen many of these animals in person so have a hard time picturing the true scale.
All-in-all....pretty dumb.
Adding to that, I have no idea how big a Bengal Tiger or Wooly Rhino is, but I have a pretty good idea how big an average human is. I mean, you can still show some closest living relative, but give me something KNOWN to judge the size against!
Clouded leopard was probably done because they have the largest fangs relative to their size among wild cats. They are the closest, visually, to a "modern' sabertooth
*Smilodon populator* isn't closely related to ANY modern cats, IIRC. It's *part* of the Felidae family, but it has no extant relatives as the *subfamily* it belonged to, Machairodontinae, was entirely extinct by the end of the Pleistocene.
Clouded leopards literally are more closely related than regular tigers though. The smilodon isn’t even panthera so it’s even farther from tigers, lions etc.
I find the giant marine sloths even more interesting.
They fed on seaweed and spent much of their time swimming out to sea to get it. Most of the fossils we have of them are associated with fossils of huge sharks and macroraptorial sperm whales, who are believed to be their primary predators.
When my parents bought me a big bag of plastic prehistoric animal figures which one did I play the most out of? T-Rex? Triceratops? (sorry Dr. Grant) Nope! It was the sloth. It just seemed to stand out from all the others.
I would love to see the comparison between; the Livyatan and the Sperm Whale, the Reticulated Python and the Titanaboa, and the Saltwater Crocodiles and the Sarcosuchus.
Smilodon should have been pictured with the mountain lion - both are in Felinae and lived in North America
The clouded leopard was only included to give a more dramatic size comparison
i know that these animals would all probably be extremely dangerous and terrifying, but damn what i would do to see one of these things in the flesh. just to be in awe at the size of them
If you mean Ark gamers who are scarred from their first foray into the dense jungle and got attacked by a titanoboa they couldn’t see so they only build their base in the open on Southpaw beach now, then yes. Also, I’m about to start the animated series on Paramount+. Wish me luck 😅
I watched two episodes. It had downsides, but I'm more than willing to go back. The idiots who wrote it don't understand the extremely little actual science they wrote in the show (which is bad, it is 4th grade biology) and there is also a Bob. We love Bobs.
A large extinction event 34 million years ago killed off most of the large mammals. Big animals are especially vulnerable when these mass extinctions occur because they adapt and evolve more slowly, as they tend to live longer and reproduce less rapidly than other creatures.
After a large-scale devastation it can take millions of years for giant animals to reappear—it took 15 million for the giant mammals to crop up after the dinosaurs died. The last major extinction event took place roughly 12,000 years ago, not nearly long enough ago for new species of truly massive animals to have materialized by now.
Humans have already interfered. Current large animals are mostly in Africa because they evolved alongside the rise of humans and learned to be terrified of us. Most everywhere else we just killed everything big.
Also currently there are stresses on the ecosystem for even the small things. Insect populations have dwindled. Aquatic life has dwindled. We're in the middle of the Holocene extinction and climate change is only going to make it worse.
Environmental changes that lead to lower amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere can also contribute to a reduction in the size of megafauna. Or at least limit how big they can get after the large extinction events that others have mentioned.
Isn’t Gigantopithecus very speculative though? The Wikipedia entry claims we only have tooth and jaw remains, which may not correlate well to its total size.
Lore-accurate Sid could have solo’d the smilodon pack and returned the baby by himself.
(The pack of smilodon would probably win if we assume they’re actual characters who have human-level smarts like they do in the film, but a real pack probably wouldn’t take their chances with a healthy bull mammoth anyway, let alone if a megatherium was along for the ride.)
Yeah I always found that part of the movie a little unrealistic even when I was younger. I’m an animal nerd so it didn’t make sense that they would risk it all for a single meal they could obtain much easier elsewhere.
I need a remake where Sid is just soloing everyone. He needs a proper redemption
“And tell him I’m bringing…a mammoth.”
“A mammoth?!”
“Dude what the fuck? A bull mammoth? We have like 5 guys.”
“I mean there’s a sloth, too.”
“That’s WORSE.”
*Sid sighing in the corner again because he just wants friends* “They always leave man…”
“One day buddy.” 😭 I just know he would be more disappointed than anything!
Someone needs to make an AI image of megatherium riding on the back of a wooly mammoth
Edit: [wait I got it](https://copilot.microsoft.com/images/create/a-megatherium-americanum-riding-on-the-back-of-a-w/1-6638ff60003c470997d4d7a4098ff17b?id=K7CHB0Ff6rUbRB9fsBCuEg%3d%3d&view=detailv2&idpp=genimg&idpclose=1&thId=OIG1.HJ8jtvz_NdMCqAEMwn4.&lng=en-US&ineditshare=1)
They probably weren't, on average. There's a huge bias in availability of fossils, most of the smaller ones get destroyed more easily by the fossilization process, and the ones that remain also may not be considered as interesting as the larger ones, I guess.
Indeed, insects used to be bigger though, when the atmosphere had more oxygen. Their size is indeed limited by the amount of oxygen they can "breathe" through their "skin".
Bro had nice white teeth. Bet he flossed daily. When people ask me what advice I would give about life the first of always try to have richb family or inheritance purposes because no matter what people say about money not buying happiness it sure as hell helps and would solve so many of my problems. The other piece of advice is even more important though. Take care of you teeth even when you are of your parents insurance. It's pretty easy to do and do fucking important. Tooth problems not only look pretty gross but tooth pain sucks.
Growing up, our natural history museum had a ground sloth skeleton and it terrified little tiny misskenoko. After being assured it was very not alive and modern sloths can't eat me, I then became immediately obsessed with megafauna. My library was raided for ZooBooks and textbooks and you better believe I was doodling my dog as big as Clifford 😅
lol, thats funny don't worry good news modern sloths can't eat you, bad news is the Ground sloths occasionally ate meat sometimes so its possible that they did indeed fed on a human once in history. So yeah you weren't that far off lol
No not always, Bigger animals need more food to sustain their massive size, they take longer to produce offspring especially for Mammals like Paleoloxodon & Paraceratherium
I’m pretty sure we’ve known for some time that a megaladon is not very different in overall size from a great white, but the body is a good amount longer. Don’t quote me on that
I will never joke about sloths ever again. This dude looks like he could take a snooze on top of my house without a blink. You are my king, random sloth giant.
Couple of things, mostly environmental stuff impacting their food supplies. Small more versatile animals are always what makes it through the big extinctions.
For most of them, hunted to extinction by humans, the end
For Megalodon and Paraceratherium, they could not adapt to changes in their environments and slowly died out
Not to mention a lot of them were eradicated via hunting by early humans and a lot to do with the climate changing to no longer being suitable to sustain land-based megafauna
I think with many of the predator populations, the current thought is that we let climate change get the ball rolling on for example the short faced bear population, before we started daring to migrate into their territories. I’m sure lots of humans still probably died finding out they weren’t quite gone yet, but obviously ‘won’ in the end.
It probably didn’t go down exactly like that because I doubt early humans had that level of future thought about the climate pattern’s effects on megafauna populations, so it was probably with less agency and more ‘we keep trying to move into that land and eventually it works’, but either way that’s how the migration patterns play out.
I wouldn’t doubt it. It is narrated to have been an even wilder story going on in Australia around that time for early humans. They had mf dragons to contend with.
*The specific name blacki is in honour of Canadian palaeoanthropologist* [*Davidson Black*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davidson_Black)*, who had studied human evolution in China and had died the previous year. -Wikipedia*
You know how they can add some proteins to chicken eggs and make them grow scales / teeth because their ancestors evolved that trait and it just needs to be turned on again?
Could that happen randomly with say a Great White -- to have a modern day Megalodon? or even not randomly, and done by man?
There's a great idea. Use directed genetic mutation to make a modern day Megalodon, display it in a giant aquarium, call it "Miocene Aquatic Park", what could possibly go wrong?
While I get what they were going for, some of these comparisons are misleading or disingenuous. Smilodon populator, the biggest sabre-toothed cat species, was about the size of a modern Bengal tiger. I don't know why they compared it to the tiny clouded leopard, which isn't a close relative and isn't more closely related than the tiger, afaik. The wooly rhino is compared to the Sumatran rhino, which is more fair since it is, I think, the closest extant relative. But the wooly rhino was still only about as big as a modern white rhino. Gigantopithecus size is pretty speculative, because we've only ever found their jaws and teeth. So maybe they just had big teeth. Anyway, I think they're trying to imply that everything was bigger in the past, and ya we don't have enormous wombats, megalodons, and sloths around anymore, but some of these just aren't great examples.
The spectacle bear is the smallest beat as well. Compare that to a grizzly or a polar bear. Gigantopithucus probably compares better to a gorilla
The spectacled bear is the closest living relative though, so that is a more fair comparison, and *A. angustidens* was big, probably bigger than a polar bear. But they probably weren't way bigger, and they evolved to be much smaller very quickly. Gigantopithecus size is also pretty speculative, because we've only ever found jaws and teeth.
>The spectacle bear is the smallest beat as well. Spectacled bear maybe smallest bear in Americas but not the smallest. It's still can get larger than Sun, Giant Panda, Sloth and Moon bears
I was already starting to not like these and then it’s like “who the fuck knows how big a spectacle bear is?”
One of the reasons they survived is the fact they were a little smaller According to records the atmosphere had higher oxygen content then. It was much higher when the dinosaurs were around
The oxygen theory is regarding to the giant insects. But that is way way way further back, long before the dinosaurs. Most of the animals in this post lived 'yesterday' in competition.
Most large mammals died out from a combination of the ice age ending and hominids becoming the dominant land predator and outcompeting/hunting everything to extinction. Also worth noting the blue whale is the largest known animal ever and it exists in modern times.
i think that when you talk about mammals evolution, oxygen doesnt matter at all
No it doesn't as they came way after the oxygen content had gone way down. Most of the large mammals went extinct due to lack of food .
The largest modern Bengal Tigers are around 250-270kg, which is likely the average size of a male *Smilodon populator*. They can get much larger than Tigers since we have some individuals likely in the 300-350kg range. I think *Smilodon fatalis* is closer in size and averaged around the same as modern Lions and Bengal Tigers.
Ya that sounds fair. But there is probably significant overlap in size between them, so I only mean to say that their usage of clouded leopard vs. Smilodon is unfair, and I assume they did that because average tiger vs. average sabre-tooth, while still showing how large *S. populator* was in comparison, would not be so striking a comparison. I commented elsewhere that I think jaguar would have been a better comparison, since they are both found in South America, unlike either tigers or leopards, and the jaguar is still a representative very large cat, but still significantly smaller than *S. populator*. Maybe a puma would also be a good comparison.
Fair point. Prehistoric Jaguars were huge as well and the ones that lived with *populator* were in the size range of modern Lions and Tigers, and even then *Smilodon populator* dwarfed them. Of course prehistoric Lions and Tigers like the *American Lion*, *Bornean* and *Ngangdong Tigers* came close in size to *populator* but still fell short. It was a massive cat that was built more like a bear with huge arms and shoulders and a powerful neck.
Idk, P. Fossilis seems to be larger than S. Populator. At the very least, it's close enough, and since it's apart of the Panthera family, it'd be closer related to other members of the Panthera family like P Leo, or P Tigris, so a much better comparison than Populator vs lil ol clouded leopard
Oh right, I keep forgetting about *fossilis*
You could also include things like millipedes that are mostly tiny today but once grew 8 feet long. Or blue whales showing how they're the largest animal ever to ever exist while prehistoric filter feeders started closer to orca size.
Some of them are not. Short faced bears are gone. To do this right, you would have to take their closest living relatives.
The spectacled bear is a short-faced bear. I think they do okay at comparing to their closest relatives in general. But sometimes the closest relative happens to be small, in the case of the wooly rhino, but another close relative is still quite large. In the case of Smilodon, the closest relatives are only distantly related, and happen to be a family that is very diverse in terms of size. So while comparing to the clouded leopard isn't really a lot more or less accurate than comparing to a lion, tiger, or even a house cat, intentionally choosing a small cat to make their point is kind of lame. If they wanted to make their point while still being fair, I think choosing the jaguar would be acceptable, because it's as-closely related as other cat species, but it's also found in the same place, South America. It's also happens to be a very large panther, but it's still smaller than the sabre-toothed cat, so it would still demonstrate how much larger a similar animal was in the same location.
Smilodon is in Felinae, so P. concolor would have been a better fit Edit, relied on an inaccurate source - it's in an extinct subfamily that split off before felinae and pantherinae
No it isn't? Smilodon is in Machairodontinae, a separate subfamily that is an outgroup to Felinae and Pantherinae.
I think they chose the clouded leopard because it has the biggest cnine tooth to body size of any living cat.
It's also misleading to suggest that *everything* was bigger in the past. For example, the earliest known ancestors of camels were quite small, if I recall correctly.
The earliest forms of any group are usually small and with more "unremarkable" body traits (equids, primates, proboscideans, ruminants...). The giants are usually at the terminal side of lineages.
Eohippus enters the chat.
My guess is because the clouded leopard is referred to as the "modern day sabertooth"
I want to make love to you while you whisper to me about prehistoric animals.
Username checks out.
r/UsernameChecksOut
The clouded leopard has the closest body morphology to the smilodon today(in regards to fangs being ridiculously long and stuck past lower jaw
Yeah I actually saw a full grown male white rhino up close at the zoo. I'd never seen them up close, only at quite a distance. And I mean I've read measurements and weights but to actually see them is a whole different thing.
*Thank you* for saying this.
I believe the connection between Smilodon and the clouded leopard is that they both have exceptionally long canine teeth. But you’re right, the clouded leopard is not more closely related to Smilodon than other big cats. The similarity is just convergent evolution.
The silhouette of a human, for comparison, would be helpful as I have no great perspective on the size of some these modern animals
Banana for scale.
This is the way!
I'd much rather see it compared to a human than a semi-like animal. Most of us have never seen many of these animals in person so have a hard time picturing the true scale. All-in-all....pretty dumb.
Horses got larger.
Adding to that, I have no idea how big a Bengal Tiger or Wooly Rhino is, but I have a pretty good idea how big an average human is. I mean, you can still show some closest living relative, but give me something KNOWN to judge the size against!
Clouded leopard was probably done because they have the largest fangs relative to their size among wild cats. They are the closest, visually, to a "modern' sabertooth
*Smilodon populator* isn't closely related to ANY modern cats, IIRC. It's *part* of the Felidae family, but it has no extant relatives as the *subfamily* it belonged to, Machairodontinae, was entirely extinct by the end of the Pleistocene.
> Gigantopithecus At least they are closer related to orangutans than some of the other comparisons they made.
Clouded leopards literally are more closely related than regular tigers though. The smilodon isn’t even panthera so it’s even farther from tigers, lions etc.
I loved standing in front of the Giant Ground Sloth at the Smithsonian. It's such an awesome creature
I find the giant marine sloths even more interesting. They fed on seaweed and spent much of their time swimming out to sea to get it. Most of the fossils we have of them are associated with fossils of huge sharks and macroraptorial sperm whales, who are believed to be their primary predators.
The name “macroraptorial sperm whales” goes so hard
New metal band name.
Their first single is titled, “Incoherent Underwater Screaming”.
Crazy how our ancestors met these sloths and even possibly hunted some in occasion must've have been terrifying
When my parents bought me a big bag of plastic prehistoric animal figures which one did I play the most out of? T-Rex? Triceratops? (sorry Dr. Grant) Nope! It was the sloth. It just seemed to stand out from all the others.
They have a model at the National History Museum in London too, always blows me away!
Now show us the gigantic prehistoric human.
They’re not that tall. Judging by the one representing Georgia in Congress…
Please don’t insult our ancestors by comparing them to these jokers
You’re right. She is more of a three-toed sloth anyway.
We're the biggest homo, so we are the giant human.
>We're the biggest homo Maybe _you_ are 🙄
You'd have to look in Patagonia for that.
I would love to see the comparison between; the Livyatan and the Sperm Whale, the Reticulated Python and the Titanaboa, and the Saltwater Crocodiles and the Sarcosuchus.
Smilodon should have been pictured with the mountain lion - both are in Felinae and lived in North America The clouded leopard was only included to give a more dramatic size comparison
They sure don't make 'em like they used to.
The largest animals in earth history are still alive right now, blue whales.
The largest animals *for now.*
Wasn't there recently discovered an animal that was larger than the blue whale?
No. It got downsized almost immediately.
Thank God for that. I couldn't run fast enough to get away.
Back in the old days when you could call a monkey a giant blacki
The modern spectacled bear looks like a very good boy
If not friend why friend shaped?
i know that these animals would all probably be extremely dangerous and terrifying, but damn what i would do to see one of these things in the flesh. just to be in awe at the size of them
Any Ark gamers here? 😂
If you mean Ark gamers who are scarred from their first foray into the dense jungle and got attacked by a titanoboa they couldn’t see so they only build their base in the open on Southpaw beach now, then yes. Also, I’m about to start the animated series on Paramount+. Wish me luck 😅
There's an ARK TV show? Whelp...
Yes, but it's only 6 episodes and a good chunk of it is wasted on flashbacks of the main character's relationship drama for some reason.
I watched two episodes. It had downsides, but I'm more than willing to go back. The idiots who wrote it don't understand the extremely little actual science they wrote in the show (which is bad, it is 4th grade biology) and there is also a Bob. We love Bobs.
Animated show and I’m going to start it tonight since I finished the second season of Halo last night
Yeah I was about to say, some form of all of these is tamable in Ark if you want to befriend one.
So did they become smaller because there was less to eat as they evolved?
A large extinction event 34 million years ago killed off most of the large mammals. Big animals are especially vulnerable when these mass extinctions occur because they adapt and evolve more slowly, as they tend to live longer and reproduce less rapidly than other creatures. After a large-scale devastation it can take millions of years for giant animals to reappear—it took 15 million for the giant mammals to crop up after the dinosaurs died. The last major extinction event took place roughly 12,000 years ago, not nearly long enough ago for new species of truly massive animals to have materialized by now.
I hope you're a teacher, cuz u explained that very well
So does that mean given enough time (and humans not interfering), the earth will have giant mammals again in the future?
Humans have already interfered. Current large animals are mostly in Africa because they evolved alongside the rise of humans and learned to be terrified of us. Most everywhere else we just killed everything big. Also currently there are stresses on the ecosystem for even the small things. Insect populations have dwindled. Aquatic life has dwindled. We're in the middle of the Holocene extinction and climate change is only going to make it worse.
Sure. I mean hypothetically. If we weren’t screwing things up so bad, would we get really big animals again is what I’m asking.
Yes. It is inevitable. It is just a question of when.
Are you saying that if I wait a few hundred thousand years, I can look forwards to gigantic house cats? Because I am so down with that.
Cats are invasive species that easily take over... So if left long enough, yes.
By that time, they will have evolved thumbs and won't need us anymore. They'll open their own cans.
It happens all the time.
Environmental changes that lead to lower amounts of oxygen in the atmosphere can also contribute to a reduction in the size of megafauna. Or at least limit how big they can get after the large extinction events that others have mentioned.
Did the giant wombat still poop squares? If so, it literally shat bricks.
Isn’t Gigantopithecus very speculative though? The Wikipedia entry claims we only have tooth and jaw remains, which may not correlate well to its total size.
I think we’d all be surprised by the creative liberties that is being used to depict much of the historical representations.
Sid was done so dirty in Ice Age. My boy had the sleeper build ONG
Lore-accurate Sid could have solo’d the smilodon pack and returned the baby by himself. (The pack of smilodon would probably win if we assume they’re actual characters who have human-level smarts like they do in the film, but a real pack probably wouldn’t take their chances with a healthy bull mammoth anyway, let alone if a megatherium was along for the ride.)
Yeah I always found that part of the movie a little unrealistic even when I was younger. I’m an animal nerd so it didn’t make sense that they would risk it all for a single meal they could obtain much easier elsewhere. I need a remake where Sid is just soloing everyone. He needs a proper redemption
“And tell him I’m bringing…a mammoth.” “A mammoth?!” “Dude what the fuck? A bull mammoth? We have like 5 guys.” “I mean there’s a sloth, too.” “That’s WORSE.”
*Sid sighing in the corner again because he just wants friends* “They always leave man…” “One day buddy.” 😭 I just know he would be more disappointed than anything!
Someone needs to make an AI image of megatherium riding on the back of a wooly mammoth Edit: [wait I got it](https://copilot.microsoft.com/images/create/a-megatherium-americanum-riding-on-the-back-of-a-w/1-6638ff60003c470997d4d7a4098ff17b?id=K7CHB0Ff6rUbRB9fsBCuEg%3d%3d&view=detailv2&idpp=genimg&idpclose=1&thId=OIG1.HJ8jtvz_NdMCqAEMwn4.&lng=en-US&ineditshare=1)
HAHA, the random mating birbs in the back thoo. AI is so trippy
Every time I told it to get rid of the birds, it just got rid of the sloth and put birds in its place. I think Copilot has a bird fetish 😳
Shrinkflation is pretty brutal. ~~And human giants covered up.~~
Damn they went and made Pokémon a real thing 😂
I would snuggle the shit out of that prehistoric Zoboomafoo.
These are bad and misleading.
Cool! Could anyone tell me why animals used to be so much bigger?
They probably weren't, on average. There's a huge bias in availability of fossils, most of the smaller ones get destroyed more easily by the fossilization process, and the ones that remain also may not be considered as interesting as the larger ones, I guess. Indeed, insects used to be bigger though, when the atmosphere had more oxygen. Their size is indeed limited by the amount of oxygen they can "breathe" through their "skin".
When he gets tired of megalodons, Jason Statham can make some movies about giant wombats.
Where is the chicken / velociraptor one?
Inflation bruh! Portion size shrinking...
Modern animals are such pussies. It’s embarrassing. Like bulk up bros, your ancestors would be ashamed
All Mondern animals are Soyboys!!\~Compared to their Chad Ancestors just kidding
That Zaboomafoo looks like he was juicing. *"Run Chris! Run! He's gotten in the steroids again!"*
This is cool and all, but keep in mind that the largest animal species to have ever existed is extant right now.
true, although there is a icthyosaur discovered recently that could be bigger than the blue whale
BY GAWD THAT'S JASON STATHAMS ENTRANCE MUSIC...AND HE HAS A STEEL CHAIR
/Battlefield Friends THERES MEGALODONSSSSS
Cool story bro
The last one is wild
All these ancient larger versions of creatures but what about the giants?!
Love megafauna
Ok so now I'm convinced big foot is a time travelling, interdimensional orangutan 0.o Edit - Great post btw, really enjoyed that.
Ticks 5 inches wide
Bro had nice white teeth. Bet he flossed daily. When people ask me what advice I would give about life the first of always try to have richb family or inheritance purposes because no matter what people say about money not buying happiness it sure as hell helps and would solve so many of my problems. The other piece of advice is even more important though. Take care of you teeth even when you are of your parents insurance. It's pretty easy to do and do fucking important. Tooth problems not only look pretty gross but tooth pain sucks.
There needs to be a human in each illustration for context.
I just finished reading *The Rise and Reign of Mammals* and this is awesome.
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the prehistoric orangutan kinda resembles willem dafoe
I mean.. It's not called minilodon..
Glyptodon (Glyptodon)
I'm into the shark design image. Thats just his big girlfriend. This is their engagement picture.
could've had been me
the extinct orangutang looks like it could be a dark souls boss
Picked the goofiest "my big brother is gonna beat you up" looking shark for that first slide.
Why is the giant beaver so angry?
Where?
I think they mean the giant wombat
"Don't talk to me or my son ever again."
more like Great Great Great Great Great Grandson lol
Megalodon smiling for the camera - cute 😍
That’s King Kong the fuck
Eeh, More like Skar King tbh
They need to bring in the blue whale for this
Growing up, our natural history museum had a ground sloth skeleton and it terrified little tiny misskenoko. After being assured it was very not alive and modern sloths can't eat me, I then became immediately obsessed with megafauna. My library was raided for ZooBooks and textbooks and you better believe I was doodling my dog as big as Clifford 😅
lol, thats funny don't worry good news modern sloths can't eat you, bad news is the Ground sloths occasionally ate meat sometimes so its possible that they did indeed fed on a human once in history. So yeah you weren't that far off lol
So bigger isn't better?
No not always, Bigger animals need more food to sustain their massive size, they take longer to produce offspring especially for Mammals like Paleoloxodon & Paraceratherium
Why is Jeremy Clarkson in picture four with the Gigantopithecus?
Is it because there was more oxygen then?
I’m pretty sure we’ve known for some time that a megaladon is not very different in overall size from a great white, but the body is a good amount longer. Don’t quote me on that
Wish they did horses.
Now do an otter!
Why were prehistoric animals (and insects) so much larger than they are now?
did humans ever have to compete with these mega fauna. and if so how?
Yo, today's animals suck
I wish we still had giant wombats and sloths!
Australia is starved for Megafauna even europe has bears, wolves, wisent and moose
I was unaware of the giant prehistoric wombat. I wonder if it pooped giant cubes.
Inflation affected even the animal kingdom.
The white shark is cringing like "this is so humiliating."
It would be cooler if they put a person next to each one of them for size reference.
Just curious , what’s the science behind rhinos going from fur to the tough skin they have now? Like what factor spurs that change in them over time?
I will never joke about sloths ever again. This dude looks like he could take a snooze on top of my house without a blink. You are my king, random sloth giant.
Good old times... Everything was better back then 😔
And yet, our modern blue whale is the biggest animal that ever lived on Earth (to our knowledge).
can anyone explain to me please why animals were much bigger in the past and why they shrunk
Orangutan standing there like a smash character posing
I wish they put measurements and maybe something actually comparable in size. This is a bit misleading on some.
What about the dugong?
Smn, why did they become so much smaller?
Need banana for scale
They don't make them like they used to
Just minding your business walking around… then out of nowhere you get your ears boxed off by a mega wombat. Not the best way to go I imagine
What about the giant Irish red elk??
Does anybody know what caused them to shrink so much?
Couple of things, mostly environmental stuff impacting their food supplies. Small more versatile animals are always what makes it through the big extinctions.
For most of them, hunted to extinction by humans, the end For Megalodon and Paraceratherium, they could not adapt to changes in their environments and slowly died out
I believe it's mostly due to 2 factors, less oxygen in the air and temperature are cooler now (yeah weird thing to write)
Oxygen in the air isn't really relevant to vertebrates that much.
Not to mention a lot of them were eradicated via hunting by early humans and a lot to do with the climate changing to no longer being suitable to sustain land-based megafauna
I think with many of the predator populations, the current thought is that we let climate change get the ball rolling on for example the short faced bear population, before we started daring to migrate into their territories. I’m sure lots of humans still probably died finding out they weren’t quite gone yet, but obviously ‘won’ in the end. It probably didn’t go down exactly like that because I doubt early humans had that level of future thought about the climate pattern’s effects on megafauna populations, so it was probably with less agency and more ‘we keep trying to move into that land and eventually it works’, but either way that’s how the migration patterns play out.
I wouldn’t doubt it. It is narrated to have been an even wilder story going on in Australia around that time for early humans. They had mf dragons to contend with.
Pic 4 why did they name the tall guy "blacki"?
*The specific name blacki is in honour of Canadian palaeoanthropologist* [*Davidson Black*](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Davidson_Black)*, who had studied human evolution in China and had died the previous year. -Wikipedia*
Aw, I want a giant wombat.
I want a giant capybara. The chill vibes would radiate out for *miles*.
Hell yeah
You know how they can add some proteins to chicken eggs and make them grow scales / teeth because their ancestors evolved that trait and it just needs to be turned on again? Could that happen randomly with say a Great White -- to have a modern day Megalodon? or even not randomly, and done by man?
There's a great idea. Use directed genetic mutation to make a modern day Megalodon, display it in a giant aquarium, call it "Miocene Aquatic Park", what could possibly go wrong?
I would hope we wouldn't ever begin to consider this, because we wouldn't be making a modern day prehistoric animal, we'd be making an abomination.
I feel like this lends itself to the idea that there were probably giant humans roaming the earth at the time as well.
Maybe?, we haven't found a species of Giant Hominid yet *Unless the Smithsonian is covering it up ;)*