10: Dakotaraptor The Dakotaraptor was a dinosaur that was covered
with feathers. But don’t let that fool you! It was anything but cute! This feathered dinosaur
could cut you with its enormous long sickle claw that it used to completely annihilate its enemies.
As you may have guessed from this raptor’s name, it was discovered in South Dakota.Even though it
was a raptor, according to researchers with the University of Kansas Paleontological Institute,
it didn't look anything like the raptors you've seen in movies like Jurassic Park.
This prehistoric creature was like an oversized chicken mixed with a T. rex. It stood at a
whopping 17 feet (5.1 m) tall, making it one of the biggest raptors in the entire world.
Besides that, it could run extraordinarily fast, it could jump over huge obstacles,
and it was very agile. It also had what were basically grappling hooks on all of its limbs.
The Dakotaraptor was capable of grabbing onto its prey with one of these deadly claws,
then slicing it to bits. The dinosaur was first discovered in 2005
in what paleontologists have named the Hell Creek Formation. It's the same formation where
fossilized remains of the Tyrannosaurus Rex, as well as three-horned triceratops have been found.
The Dakotaraptor walked the Earth about 66 million years ago. And when it stretched its wings,
it had a wingspan of 3 feet (.9 m) in total. The only raptor bigger and deadlier than this one
is the Utahraptor, longer by an amazing 6 feet (1.8 m), although the Utahraptor
died out somewhere around 60 million years before the Dakotaraptor came on the scene,
so as far as we know, this massive raptor was the largest of its time. And was extremely lethal!
9: Ancient Elephants Elephants lived in what is today Israel
for somewhere around 1.5 million years before they went extinct. They lived in Israel for so
long that when prehistoric humans emerged in the region, they all lived together at the same time!
Prehistoric humans, noticing the massive bodies of the elephants would potentially feed large
groups of them, began to hunt them. As the early humans got more clever and learned to
hunt and perfect their killing tactics, the middle eastern elephants were pushed toward extinction.
According to Professor Ran Barkai from Tel Aviv University, humans actually hunted and fed on
elephants for hundreds of thousands of years. They even developed specific tools just for the purpose
of hunting and cooking these creatures. Remember, these weren't modern humans,
but very distant relatives to humans that lived over 400,000 years ago. And for that matter, these
weren't ordinary elephants. They were prehistoric beasts, over twice as large as any modern elephant
on the planet today. They also had straight tusks, unlike modern, curved-tusk elephants.
You're probably wondering how prehistoric humans could hunt something twice as large as an African
elephant. The truth is that they didn't hunt them that often. A single group would only need to hunt
one or two elephants a year. They were so big that the meat would sustain their society
for up to six months. Archaeologists have compared this to modern Arctic populations
who kill just one whale a year to support their people through an entire winter. But these
animals that were so large, didn’t reproduce that frequently which also didn’t help their numbers.
8: The Flying Giraffe There was once a flying monster known
as a pterosaur that was as large as a giraffe. Just picture a giraffe except with a wingspan of
some 40 feet (12 meters) and a huge predator’s beak. If you've pictured this in your head,
what you're looking at is the Quetzalcoatlus. This amazing pterosaur dominated the skies of
our planet millions of years ago, but was actually neither bird nor
dinosaur. It lived alongside the Tyrannosaurus rex and was the biggest flying creature that
ever existed. Scientists remain unsure of how it managed to get its huge body into the air.
At least, there was some serious skepticism as to whether it could fly – and if it did fly, how it
sustained itself with such a massive body. A new group of researchers from the University of Texas,
along with a handful of aerospace engineers and biomechanics, studied the smaller fossils of
other pterosaurs to try and solve the mystery. They now believe that the Quetzalcoatlus jumped
over 8 feet (2.4 meters) into the air to take flight- like a giraffe jumping clean over your
head to get enough lift to stay in the air! But then again, this is just a theory. No one
can say for certain how the prehistoric beast managed to get into the air. Whatever the case,
it is still the most impressive flying creature of its time,
and would have been an incredible sight to see. 7: Hell Heron & Jurassic Mouse
There have been so many animals on our planet that we don't know even a fraction of them. Yet every
year, scientists with the Natural History Museum do their best to identify and catalog as many new
ancient species as possible. In 2021, they managed to document over 500 new species, including
a few that are both terrifying and bizarre. One of them is something called a hell heron,
a heron-like bird but with the face of a crocodile. It stalked the Isle
of Wight in the UK 125 million years ago. Another unexpected creature (this one still alive)
hails from Singapore. It was a cricket identified by scientists only because of its unique song.
But the museum also identified a handful of British dinosaurs, almost 300 species of very tiny
shrimp, and a prehistoric mouse from the Jurassic era. This mouse scuttled and scurried beneath the
stomping feet of the world’s biggest dinosaurs in what is today Scotland, 166 million years ago.
The really amazing point here is that scientists are only scratching the surface of the diversity
on our planet throughout the ages. Some of the new species they found are still living here today,
including 90 new types of beetles, 52 species of wasps, and 13 moths. They also found five new
types of plants in Africa. And if we don't even know half of the creatures and plants still alive,
imagine how many ancient species of monsters and prehistoric creatures we're still yet to discover.
6: The Earth’s Biggest Sea Monster Experts believe that they have finally
discovered the most gigantic prehistoric sea monster that ever lived. Paleontologists are
saying that it could be the largest known animal of its day. This beast lived 244 million years ago
and weighed 40 tons (36 metric tons)! This creature was a type of ichthyosaur,
one that Lars Schmitz from Scripps College in Claremont says had gigantism! Clearly,
since it measured around 60 feet (18 meters) long. Of course, it still wasn't as big as a modern blue
whale. Blue whales are the biggest creature that have ever existed on Earth period! They can grow
to over 100 feet (30 meter) long and weigh over 400,000 pounds (181,436 kg). Just the tongue
of a blue whale weighs more than the average elephant. But this ichthyosaur was pretty close,
with its head the size of an adult human! And what makes them so interesting is that
they were way faster than whales. They evolved at a time when the planet was still recovering from
the horrible extinction at the end of the Permian period that wiped out nearly every living thing.
As for what this creature looked like, picture a swimming Komodo dragon mixed with the Loch
Ness Monster. That's essentially what the giant ichthyosaur was, a huge lizard with paddle-like
fins for swimming around in the ocean. What do you think is more terrifying,
the modern great white shark or the prehistoric Komodo dragon/Loch Ness Monster hybrid?
Let me know your thoughts in the comments! 5: The Dire Wolf
Despite the name, the dire wolf was not a wolf. It was its very own species, distinctly different
from the gray wolf of today. The prehistoric dire wolf, for those who don't know, was a top predator
throughout the Americas over 11,000 years ago. We know this because at La Brea Tar Pits,
over 4000 dire wolf remains have been excavated in the past century. It's pretty obvious that there
were a lot of these canines running around 11,700 years before today. That was right at the end of
the Ice Age. The problem has been that scientists can't seem to agree on much about their evolution,
or even why they suddenly disappeared when they were clearly bigger,
more ferocious, and more intimidating than the gray wolves that lived at the same time.
Using cutting edge technology, researchers have finally been able to take ancient bones from dire
wolves and look at their genomes. Using different fossils from between 13,000 and 50,000 years ago,
researchers constructed the evolutionary history of the carnivore for the first time ever.
What's really significant is that they found no evidence of mixed genes between dire wolves,
ordinary wolves, or coyotes. It means the dire wolf evolved in isolation,
not breeding in any way with other wolves. The best guess scientists have now as to where the
animal came from might surprise you. It's believed that dire wolves diverged from gray wolves from
one common ancestor 5 million years ago. The dire wolf then evolved all on its own in America
while wolves and coyotes followed their own family tree in Europe and made it
all the way until the end of the Ice Age. Scientists are looking into perhaps bringing
the dire wolf back from extinction. What do you think? Would you like these giant
prehistoric creatures brought back to life? Let me know in the comments below!
And now for number 4 but first wanted to give a big shout out to
The Enigma and Richyb86
Thanks so much for watching and supporting Origins Explained! If you are new here, welcome and be
sure to subscribe for more videos like these! 4: Monster Shrimp
500 million years ago, there was a gigantic carnivorous shrimp that
roamed the seas of the world. It was a top predator during the Middle Cambrian period,
growing to an outstanding 3 feet (.9 m) in length. But according to a new study, it may not have been
that vicious of a killer despite its impressive size. Researchers are saying that rather than
crunching its prey, it gummed its food to death. When researchers first started studying the
monster shrimp, they figured it was a real killer. They thought it roamed the sea, chomping through
the shells of trilobites and preying on other creatures. But after looking at the mouthparts
of 400 fossils of the shrimp, known scientifically as Anomalocaris, researchers noticed that their
mouths were soft. They showed no chipped teeth or broken mouthparts from chomping through shells.
The consensus now is that the 3-foot shrimp beast was only capable of
gumming its food. It could have feasted on soft-shell crustaceans, but probably not.
More realistically, this disturbing little monster spent its time combing through the
mud and slurping up worms. Either that, or it may have used the tentacles in its mouth as a filter,
slurping plankton straight out of the water much like whales do today.
3: The Giant Southern Lizard The Giganotosaurus, also known to
some as the giant southern lizard, was one of the biggest carnivorous dinosaurs that ever existed!
This beast roamed South America during the late Cretaceous Period. But surprisingly, it
only lived from between 99.6 to 97 million years ago. It may have been a king among dinosaurs,
but its existence was a relative blip on the Earth’s timeline.
This dinosaur was an absolute beast, no matter how fearsome the T-Rex might have been!
The Giganotosaurus was big, strong, and fast. Its strong back limbs with heavy bone structure
indicate it probably was a good sprinter, with an estimated cruising speed of 31mph.
In terms of size, the Giganotosaurus was bigger than the T. rex and smaller than the Spinosaurus.
Yet neither of these animals lived in the same place or even at the same time. Plus,
the Giganotosaurus is unique. Sure, it was over 43 feet (13.1 m) long and 14 tons (12.7 metric tons).
But it also had an enormous skull, short arms, and hands with three fingers,
each tipped with a sharp claw. There’s also only one species of Giganotosaurus which is
in stark contrast to things like Tyrannosaurs, which there were all kinds of. It’s hard to
know why it went extinct but it probably had something to do with its large size,
and it might have run out of food at some point and wasn’t able to support its appetite!
2: The Tallest Rhino In China, researchers
have discovered the fossilized remains of a rhinoceros that grew to be taller than a giraffe.
The giant rhino species lived roughly 26.5 million years ago on the Tibetan Plateau.
Based on the anatomy of its skull, researchers think it looked more like a modern tapir than a
rhino, with an extremely short trunk instead of a sharp horn. But still, it was ridiculously tall.
This colossal prehistoric creature has been linked directly to the modern rhinoceros,
with researchers saying it was really a cousin to the rhino. It weighed roughly 24 tons (21.7
metric tons), heavier than four African elephants. Its skull was about 3 feet (.9 meters) in length.
The average adult stood somewhere around 16 feet (4.87 m) at the shoulder. Its neck was then about
7 feet (2.1 m) long, bringing the total to over 23 feet (7 m). In comparison, giraffes alive today
only stand between 14 and 19 feet (4.2 - 5.7 m) at the top of their heads. Taking that into
consideration, along with the fact that modern rhinos are significantly shorter than giraffes,
trying to just visualize this prehistoric creature is enough to present a bit of a challenge.
Sadly for us, we will never get to see such a beast in real life. The hornless giant rhinos
lived across Central Asia from between 50 million years until 23 million years ago. It's long since
extinct and isn't likely to be coming back. 1: The Giant Pterosaur
In 2013, police raided a shipment of illegal fossils. These fossils came from Brazil,
hidden in barrels and loaded onto trucks. The police discovered thousands of limestone slabs
containing the fossilized remains of prehistoric creatures that lived millions of years ago. They
had been taken from the Araripe Basin and were set to be sold to private collectors and legitimate
museums across the world. These fossils would have fetched the sellers thousands of dollars apiece.
But instead, the police intercepted the illegal export and sent 3000 fossils to
the University of Sao Paulo to be studied. Among the fossils taken by the police was
one that really stood out. Researchers at the university identified it as a miniature pterosaur
with some of the most intense headgear ever. It was about four feet (1.2 m) tall, much shorter
than the flying giraffe we talked about earlier. But this pterosaur was unique in that it had a
huge crest on its head – so big that it could only fly short distances. It basically had a
big pointy crown on its head that weighed it down too much to fly properly. Picture an eagle with a
giant spike on the top of its head, preventing it from flying much farther than tree to tree.
Thanks for watching! What prehistoric creature is your absolute favorite?
Let me know which one and why in the comments and thanks a lot for watching! Remember
to hit subscribe and check out more fascinating creature videos from the channel!