The Titanoboa, is a 48ft long snake dating from around 60-58million years ago. It had a rib cage 2ft wide, allowing it to eat whole crocodiles, and surrounding the ribcage were muscles so powerful that it could crush a rhino. Titanoboa was so big it couldn’t even spend long amounts of time on land, because the force of gravity acting on it would cause it to suffocate under its own weight.
I’m so glad they aren’t around
omg me too. I’m scared enough of 26 ft long anacondas. I’m so happy Megalodons, those giant sharks, aren’t alive either
Praise natural selection
I remember watching Walking with Beasts or something similar, or some British tv show about evolution
The subject was something like a 12 foot long water scorpion
I was so startled by its sudden appearance and narration that I yelped: “12 fucking feet?!?! I’m fucking glad it’s extinct!”
Dude, prehistory was home to some fucking TERRIFYING creatures. For some reason, everything back then was enormous and scary. Extinction doesn’t always have to be a bad thing!
And Poppy, what you saw was an arthropod known as Pterygotus (it was actually featured in Walking With Monsters). Not only was it as big (or maybe even bigger) than your average human, it had a stinger the size of a lightbulb. REALLY glad that bugger isn’t around anymore.
Also, Megalodon deserves to be mention again, because just hearing its name makes me want to never be submerged in water ever again.
GOD, I HATE THIS POST. HOW DO WE EVEN KNOW THAT SHIT ISN’T STILL AROUND? LURKING? EVOLVING? WE DON’T. WE DON’T KNOW SHIT ABOUT SHIT DOWN THERE. THE OCEAN IS A PRIMEVAL HELLSCAPE NIGHTMARE AND WE ALL JUST DIP OUR STUPID FRAGILE UNPROTECTED FETUS BODIES AROUND THE EDGES OF IT LIKE THAT’S NORMAL. FUCK THE OCEAN.
this is so relevant to my interests
It wasn’t just the predators. North Carolina was once home to giant ground sloths…
THAT IS A GODDAMNED LEAF-EATING SLOTH.
We’ve got a skeleton of one of these fuckers at the museum downtown, and man, just being NEAR it is unsettling.
DON’T FORGET PREHISTORIC WHALES, SOME OF THOSE FUCKERS WERE TERRIFYING
AMBULOCETUS WAS AMPHIBIOUS AND PRETTY BADASS
BASILOSAURUS WAS THIS GIANT REPTILIAN CETACEAN THAT PROBABLY SWAM LIKE A DUMB EEL BECAUSE OF ITS TINY FLUKES BUT THIS FUCKER WAS 60 FEET LONG AND AT THE TOP OF THE MARINE FOOD CHAIN
AND THEN THERE’S MY FAVORITE, ZYGOPHYSETER, WHICH WAS THIS HUGE EARLY SPERM WHALE THAT ATE SHARKS AND OTHER WHALES
IT WAS NOTHING BUT TEETH
The reason why the animals in the prehistoric times were so big was because there was much more oxygen in the atmosphere if I recall correctly. Because there was so much oxygen and so few carbon gasses, life on earth was able to grow to terrifying lengths and heights, don’t forget how giant the bugs were.
I have never seen so much prime nope in a single post
Also important to note that megalodon is theorized to still be alive,possibly living in the darkest depths of the ocean. They haven’t found signs of its extinction
scientists: “we haven’t seen a megalodon in quite some time now, let’s just hope it’s exstinct”
This whole post is my JAM not gonna lie I am fascinated by massive prehistoric animals
having parents that were really angry and petty and abusive when you were young is weird, because it makes part of you grow up to want to be kind, to generate good things, to be a source of peace and wellbeing for others; but it makes another part of you grow up to be quick, and sharp, and spiteful, and that’s always the part that shows itself first in a hard situation, so it’s a struggle between your hateful gut reactions and your wish to not add any more misery to the world. it’s a hard balance, and the people who really, really know me – i know they see that anger flash in my eyes before i quiet it, if i quiet it…i want to overcome years of conditioning, and with gentle, constant force, i know i’ll mellow it. it just takes time.
I built a nap hole in my closet which is great and has no downside until someone comes into my room looking for me and I have to crawl out of my closet which is frankly impossible to do with dignity and without looking like a sleepy Gollum hissing “what does it wants who wakes us up”
I see no downsides to this
I had a napping closet… I missed school once because Mom thought I had left on the early bus and I slept half the day. I remember walking blearily into the living room and she jumped “Where the hell did you come from!?”
oxford was built and operational as a college before the rise of the mayans and cleopatra lived in a time nearer to pizza hut’s invention than to the pyramids being built
I need a noncomprehensive history book that covers Known World History in time periods, like “in this century, all this shit was happening concurrently” and not just all spread out so I have to piece it together like some unpaid uneducated scholar
Mongols were fighting Samurai in Japan and Knights in Europe at the same time.
Star Wars a New Hope came out the same year as the last execution in France by Guillotine.
Abraham Lincoln and Edgar Allen Poe were friends in their early 20′s.
When the Great Pyramids were being built there were areas that still had Woolly Mammoths roaming.
Harvard University didn’t teach calculus in its first few years after being established because calculus wasn’t invented yet.
Nintendo was founded two years after the Eiffel Tower was constructed
This is the book you want: The Timetables of History – going year by year (or in the earlier sections, at least century by century) and showing you what was going on in various parts of the world in several categories (e.g. Politics, Literature, Science, etc.) Super useful for visualizing what events were happening at the same time.