Top 10 Dinosaurs That Make Jurassic Park Look Like A Petting Zoo
10.
Titanis
Many people own birds as pets.
These small creatures are usually seen as benign and an animal that in no way poses
any type of threat to homo sapien (that’s us).
How can a bird endanger humankind?
Welcome to Titanis.
The name alone conjures up something majestic and magnanimous.
And it should, as Titanis was a flightless land bird that roamed the plains of North
America in the Pliocene and Pleistocene ages, some 5 to 2 million years ago.
And check this out-Titanis grew to heights of eight to 10 feet tall, towering over the
average man.
Also, it weighed up to 300 pounds with powerful legs which enabled the bird to run up to speeds
of 40 miles per hour.
What was its diet?
Meat.
With a downward curved beak, heavy skull and powerful neck, a downward strike could kill
easily or in the least, rip hunks of flesh out of you.
Try to survive that, puny human.
Soon you will be seeing Titanis come to a movie screen near you, as the popular fiction
novel “The Flock,” by author James Robert Smith is currently in development as a feature
film, and the premise is all about what happens if Titanis never became extinct and came face
to face with man.
Lots of human death, that’s what happens.
9.
Titanoboa
Are you afraid of snakes?
Well if the answer is “yes” you will not like this entry.
Take a gander upon the Titanoboa.
We have here another creature with the word “titan” in its name, which shows that
it means business.
The titanoboa’s natural habitat was South America.
It lived approximately 60 million years ago in the Paleocene era.
Imagine this: the titanoboa grew up to a length of 43 feet long.
That’s longer than a bus and weighed an astounding 2,500 pounds.
Now consider this.
The current record for the largest snake in captivity is 24 feet and 300 pounds in weight.
Enough said.
Oh yeah, the titanoboa regularly ate crocodiles for dinner.
And since a croc is bigger than the average human, the titanboa will have no problems
swallowing us whole.
8.
Entelodon
First birds and now pigs.
How can a little piggy be dangerous to the health of the human race?
Enter Entelodon.
This is not your normal pig.
The name of this creature is Greek for “perfect teeth.”
That should tell you something.
And, its pseudonym is “The Killer Pig.”
Roaming the wide terrain of Eurasia around 27 to 30 plus million years ago, smack dab
in the late Eocene and middle Oligocene period, 30 million years after the dinosaur.
This killer pig grew up to 10 feet in length, weighed about 1,000 pounds and stood the height
of an average man.
It wasn’t known as “the killer pig” and “perfect teeth” for nothing – it
was a voracious meat eater.
And what are humans made of?
That’s right.
Meat.
This beast could consume almost about anything, from leaves to fruit to carcasses.
Bones would easily be crushed by its jaws, aided by its extremely tough and strong neck
muscles.
Entelodon was such a voracious eater that it would become cannibalistic when food was
short.
7.
Spinosaurus
Now we are moving into the realm of the big boys.
Forget the Tyrannosaurus Rex.
Forget about Giganotosaurus.
Spinosaurus is the largest meat eating dinosaur ever.
Here are its stats.
It weighed up to 23 tons, which outweighs both the Tyrannosaurus and the Giganotosaurus.
It grew up to 59 feet in length.
A dinosaur of the Cretaceous period, it lived around 112 to 97 million years ago, terrorizing
its peers in North Africa.
Spinosaurus’s distinctive feature was the row of long spines that went down its back,
like a sail, hence its name.
The purpose of the sail may have been for mating purposes or to ward off enemies, even
though Spinosaurus did not have many predators to worry about.
Spinosaurus was capable of gaining speeds of up to 15 mph, with row upon row of needle
type teeth in its crocodile-like jaws.
Even though these teeth were not serrated, which means that most of its diet probably
consisted of fish and possible dead carcasses, it would still have no problems tearing into
our small, fragile bodies like the fish it feasted on.
6.
Megalania
You know the Komodo dragon, the feared largest living member of the monitor lizard family?
The lizard that can kill with one bite?
The lizard that is extremely hazardous to humans?
Well forget it.
Enter the real dragon – Megalania.
Living some 2 plus million years ago, in the Pleistocene period, this beast of a land dweller
had a skull 29 inches long, a length of 23 feet and reaching weights of between 1,320
to 1,370 pounds.
Compare this to the Komodo, in which the Komodo dragon reaches an average length of 10 feet
and weight of up to 150 pounds.
The Megalania completely dwarfs the deadly Komodo.
It is now known that Megalania is the largest terrestrial land lizard to have ever lived.
It is theorized that due to its immense size and body type, the diet of the Megalania consisted
of the Diprotodon, which by the way, was only the largest marsupial to ever have lived,
reaching lengths of 10 feet long, a height of 6.6 feet tall and weighing an incredible
6,200 pounds.
These are important statistics to recount, because if the enormous Diprotodon was the
main staple of food for Megalania, a human would be just a mere snack, an appetizer at
best for Megalania.
Megalania was like a tank, with broad, strong and heavy limbs and body in addition to have
rows of blade like teeth and to make matters worse, Megalania, like the Komodo dragon,
was venomous.
5.
Hatzegopteryx
Forget the previous mentioned terror bird.
As I stated, now we are dealing with the big boys.
Here we have Hatzegopteryx.
This is the largest flying animal to have ever existed.
Flying over Europe 65 million years ago, this pterosaur monster weighed up to 250 pounds
with a wingspan of up to 40 feet.
A 40 foot wingspan!
Amazing.
But let us continue.
When touching ground, this creature was as tall as the present day giraffe, with a 10
foot long skull.
Its beak alone was three feet in length.
With stats such as these, it easily preyed on land dinosaurs that lived on Hatzeg Island.
The creature’s skull was tough and robust, due to the plate like structure of its skull
and it lower jaw contained a groove at the point of articulation, which allowed it to
have a massive gape.
A flying eating machine of this size is a human’s worst nightmare.
4.
Mapusaurus
Mapusaurus, also known as the “Earth Lizard,” was a massive carnivore that lived in what
is present day Argentina, during the late Cretaceous era.
It had similar dimensions to Giganotosaurus, which incidentally it’s related to.
Weighing six tons and growing in lengths of over 40 feet long, this monster was a fearsome
creature in its time.
So imagine the fear it would conjure up if it existed in the wild today.
We would be very easy pickings.
Slightly larger than the Tyrannosaurus Rex, it was unearthed during an excavation by the
Argentinean-Canadian Dinosaur Project.
Paleontologists Rodolfo Coria and Phil Currie gave the creature its designation.
To understand how fearsome this creature is, comprehend this – its skull was the size
of the average sized man.
3.
Giganotosaurus
Giganotosaurus reached an astounding length of 47 feet.
Its weight was eight tons.
Its teeth were eight inches long.
And it lived and killed 95 million years ago, in the region of what is now known as the
country of Argentina.
Also, this creature had two hands with three fingers, containing very sharp claws.
And what made this monster truly scary is that its arms were bigger than that of the
Tyrannosaurus, meaning it had more weaponry to use for its job of killing.
After careful analysis and research, it was discovered that despite its fearsome size,
the Tyrannosaurus did have an edge in one distinct area – biting power.
The bite of the Giganotosaurus was nearly three times as weak as that of the T. Rex,
but it is still powerful enough to devour a human, whole.
2.
Allosaurus
Here’s the line for the Allosaurus – its natural habitat was North America, it lived
during the Jurassic period, which was 150 million years ago, it was 40 feet long and
weighed about three tons.
Its diet of course was purely based on meat.
One can look at the Allosaurus as an almost Tyrannosaurus Rex light, but no less dangerous.
This meat eater was plentiful in North America, attested to by the many intact fossils found
in Utah.
It was theorized that these specimens died by jumping into mud pits to prey on entangled
herbivores, becoming entangled themselves.
Its prey probably included such giant beasts like stegosaurids and sauropods.
Various theories abound regarding its hunting behavior, with some stating that they hunted
in packs while other theories state that they were loners and quite hostile to each other,
even possibly eating its dead, but it is known fact that the Allosaurus would use ambush
techniques against its prey, utilizing its jaw like a hatchet.
1.
Acrocanthosaurus
Living during the early Cretaceous period, 125 million years ago, this bipedal rampaging
carnivore weighed six tons and grew up to 40 feet in length.
With the unique feature of a narrow ridge going down its back (hence its name being
Greek for “high spined lizard”), it prowled the woods of North America, searching and
hunting for prey.
Like the T. Rex, it featured short arms, incredible biting power and strong legs.
Acrocanthosaurs’s ridge may have been used for mating purposes, like the Spinosaurus,
or perhaps as a way of regulating its body temperature.
Despite not living in the same time period as the T. Rex, do not misunderstand, it will
kill you and eat you just as quickly.