Hey Youtube, Jim here!
Welcome to Top 10 Archive!
Since not many of us get to see enormous animals up close, sometimes watching them on video
just doesn’t cut it.
What’s crazier yet is that some of the largest animals to ever be found on earth, aren’t
even actually here anymore.
What do you think is the largest animal on our planet?
Let us tell you, with this list of the top 10 biggest animals to ever roam Earth!
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section, tell us what the biggest animal you've ever seen was!
10.
Paraceratherium Are all elephants not the same?
I guess not.
The African elephant is the largest land mammal on our planet right now.
However, it’s got nothing on the record-breaking Paraceratherium, the largest land mammal that
ever existed.
It’s something of a rhinoceros, minus the horn.
I know, you’re thinking “what’s a rhino without a horn?”, but I’m just trying
to give you a rough idea.
The huge creature stood over 24 feet high and weighed somewhere between 33,000 and 44,000
pounds.
This means it was almost as long as a London Bus if you turned it vertically.
In weight, it’d be two and a half T-Rexes.
Scared of the thought of this guy coming after you?
No need.
Not only is he long gone, while he was around he was actually a herbivore who, like giraffes,
used its long neck to reach treetops.
Unfortunately, he went extinct after grassland took over his habitat and his main source
of food went scarce.
9.
The Whale Shark Usually, the names of sharks are slightly
obscure and only tangentially related to how these animals actually look and act.
Except with the hammerhead, that one is spot on.
The Whale Shark, in this case, is actually a sea animal worth fearing by its size alone.
It’s the largest living animal that isn’t a cetacean, which basically translates to
the largest animal that isn’t a whale.
It’s about 36 feet long and can weigh up to 41,000 pounds, some even bigger.
This means it’s around five times the size of Shaquille O'Neal in height.
However, size isn’t everything here.
Despite having a size advantage over every other creature in the ocean, this guy just
takes plankton and other small fish.
They’re so large and gentle that they’ll often give other fish a ride.
Yes, just like in Finding Nemo!
8.
Leedsichthys This sea animal is as large as it is hard
to pronounce.
Back when it existed, it beat the Whale Shark in size by a lot of Shaquille O’Neals.
In fact, the Leedsichthys, though believed once to have reached 90 feet in length, was
most likely around 55 feet, which is still longer than a Semi Trailer.
It weighed around 43,000 pounds.
Just like the whale shark, it was pretty harmless.
It would swim around with its mouth open ingesting all the plankton, shrimp, and jellyfish that
could find themselves unfortunate around to get sucked in.
The Leedsichthys would then filter them through large mesh plates at the back of its mouth.
The scariest thing this animal could have done to a human is stop and rest on top of
a daring diver.
So, basically, nothing.
Sadly, they died out some 150 million years ago.
7.
The Kronosaurus Ah, it’s about time a “saurus” made
it onto this list, right?
This animal and its cousin, the Pilosaurus, were the largest of their kind.
They were around 30-35 feet in length and weighed between 30,000 and 40,000 pounds.
They were named after The King of the Titans that devoured his own children, Cronus.
That’s not too comforting, is it?
Well, he’s not quite like the other large gentle creatures on our list.
This guy roamed the deep waters - which would be a terrifying place to be anyway - preying
on fish, squid, and even other animals its size.
Scientists believe it was at the very top of the food chain and inflicted a lot more
damage than it ever experienced.
6.
Palaeoloxodon Namadicus The Palaeoloxodon Namadicus, also known as
the Asian straight-tusked elephant, had a height of 16 feet, which means it could have
been as big as some dinosaurs.
Of course, it’s hard to know how lard it could get at full size, because we lack a
lot of their fossils, but if the studies aren’t flawed, this animal was probably bigger than
the Paracerathium, the world’s largest land mammal.
The Asian straight-tusked elephant roamed through India and made it all the way to Japan,
and probably died out about 24,000 years ago.
Scientists studied its leg bone fossils recently and suggested, it may have been the largest
land mammal to have existed.
Sorry, Paraceratherium.
5.
The Shastasaurus No, it’s not a tongue twister.
Well, it is, but it’s also the largest known marine reptile.
It’s twice as long as the animal who previously held that revered spot on top of the marine
reptiles, the Liopleurodon.
It’s 68 feet long and weighs 68,000 pounds.
It’s the weight of almost 19 cars!
It didn’t have teeth though, like most things that frighten us, and it probably ate by sucking
things into its mouth like a vacuum.
4.
The Megalodon This sounds like some kind of tournament that
the TV keeps making sound a lot more exciting than it actually is.
Like they have too many tickets and not enough sales.
Really, it’s a prehistoric member of the shark family that existed about 25 million
years ago.
It was about 52 feet long and, get this, could have fit a modern-day rhinoceros in its jaws.
This means a random human would have been like a piece of gum.
We’d be like garnish!
No wonder this creature has “mega” in its name.
3.
The Spinosaurus What is huge, scary, and eats meat?
No, not me!
Ok, what’s huge, scary, and eats meat and lived about 100 million years ago?
It’s called the Spinosaurus and lived around what we now call Africa.
It was about 60 feet long from head to tail and weighed about 10 tons.
Also, it’s back had this spiny type of protrusion that was about 7 feet tall when the creature
arched its back.
It seems like this guy was really all about scary appearances.
Whether it was actually threatening or not, we’ll never know, because it has been extinct
for about 90 million years.
2.
Argentinosaurus If you had to take one guess, where do you
think this animal was from?
That’s right.
In 1988, Scientists found the fossils of the largest land dwelling-herbivore in Argentina.
The dinosaur, or at least its remains, are about 100 million years old and, when standing,
it would have been as large as a 6-story tall building and stretched 120 feet from head
to tail!
We don’t know much about it besides that it ate plants, but it probably weighed about
100 tons.
1.
Blue Whale Alright!
The coveted #1 Spot that animals have reached after for millions of years - and the winner
is... the Blue Whale!
It’s not only huge, but also still existing.
Thanks to whale hunters, they don’t grow nearly as large as they used to.
Before, they’d reach up to 100 feet in length and they’d weigh up to 175 tons.
That’s almost twice as heavy as a Space Shuttle.
Now, though, they only grow up to 80 feet in length.
Even when they’re babies, they are 25 feet long and drink about 100 gallons of milk every
day.
Still, they’re so large, other things get compared to it in size.
Like, they are roughly 12 Shaquille O’Neal's long.