What extinct animals would make for good creatures in a fantasy

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I prefer gnolls to keep them as battle beasts, instead of Hyaenadons.

Terror birds. Like chocobos, but not homosexual.

Dire wolves

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If you could tame them like elephants, Paraceratherium would be an amazing beast of burden.

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>>55085213
Something like Kelenken? 2.7 meters tall and 10% giant beak.

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>>55085173
They are pretty nasty.

A lot of fairly cool creatures today had bigger, scarier relatives in history - from things like the Irish Elk, which simply gives you a really cool set of antlers for your wall, to shit like Deinosuchus, which was basically the same as modern crocs except 10 meters long

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Yes there were giant carnivorous armadillos.

>>55085213
>>55085259

>OP asks for non-dinosaurs
>Post dinosaurs

>>55085362
>calling birds dinosaurs
Do you also call Muslims Christian?

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>>55085362
*Non-avian dinosaurs. Better?

Now have a Phorusrhacos. 2.5 meters high and scary as fuck.

Imagine a late Cenozoic setting human small band vs. Megafauna. And our only fucking allies are literal fucking Tapirs and tiny shitters.

>>55085480
You dont even have to go that back, Moas still existed up to 1880

>>55085173
>I personally really like Entelodonts
I'm guessing you'll really like Exalted 3e, then.

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>>55085497
Apparently I suck dicks and they were gone by 1440 +/- 20yrs error. And 1880 was when they started parading a complete Fossil.

>>55085450
INTERIOR CROCODILE ALLIGATOR

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Diprotodon aka the giant wombat. Australia had some cool megafauna.

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>>55085529
They're giant goannas.

Haast's eagle is pretty cool. Used to hunt 200 kilogram Moa.

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>>55085570

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Giant platypus.

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>>55085497
>>55085527
You might have been thinking of Madagascan Elephant Birds, who may have lasted to about that time.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_bird

>>55085604
Brother, Madagascar isnt something we humans should have fucked with, it was this tiny little awesome thing and we just had to fuck it up. Tbt when Dodos were a thing.

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>>55085497
Moas were big, but they were essentially giant kiwis. Docile and harmless.

Here's Ornimegalonyx or Cuban giant owl. Over a meter tall, it was the apex predator of the island. These would be amazing as pets or dog/cat substitute.

>>55085622
Never said they were this enemy to be feared if anything Haast's eagles were the fucking thing to fear.

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>>55085646
Here's the best eagle, or rather condor. Argentavis magnificens.

>>55085394
that's a retarded analogy

>>55085223
>Paraceratherium
What would the locals call them? Paraceratherium would not pass the 'stable hand daily use' test

>>55085681
So now we know Rocs existed. It's either this or the Quebrantahuesos from Spain.

>>55085697
Paraceras.

>>55085697
biggus dikkus

>>55085697
Paracera > Parcera > Parsra

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>>55085707
I also love the fact that at some point, less than 200k years ago on Malta giant swans hunted tiny elephants. And that's awesome!

>>55085362
Dinos have teeth. Terror birds have beaks.

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>Megistotherium osteothlastes was an enormous hyaenodontid that lived 23 million years ago. It is one of the largest terrestrial carnivorous mammals known to have existed. It was about 1.5 meters high at the shoulders and 3.5 meters in head and body length, with a 1 meter long tail and a 65 cm long skull. Its body mass has been estimated at 500 kg or 880 kg.

Hell, it's like an African polar bear. Dire anything has nothing on this monster!

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>while sailing to another part of the continent, your party's boat is attacked by a Liopleurodon
What do?

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>>55086140
Laugh at it

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>>55086140
>the most deadly predator of the Jurassic is watching his prey

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OK, you know how baboons are this big scary motherfuckers with large fangs, who work in groups? Well there once was a baboon as tall as a human, ON ALL FOURS!

>>55086173
It's still the size of a Great White though.

>>55086140
Pray

>>55086173
Aint there mosasaurs that grew realy big?

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>>55086223
There's one Mosasaur species they reckon was about 17 meters long, one of the actual Mosasuars

Liopleurodon was reckoned to be about 6.4 meters, but the biggest in its family, Kronosaurus, is thought to have been 10-12 meters

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>>55086396
Mammals are still the best. Basilosaurus baby! 18m long!

>>55086198
That's just an orc

>>55085529
I DRIVE A CHEVROLET MOVIE THEATER

>>55085173
My nigga. Orcs in my setting ride entelodonts instead wargs or any other habitual mount. There's a background explanation for it, but I picked them just because I find them fuckin terrifying.

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>there could have been prehistoric elves but we wouldn't be able to tell from their skeletons

>>55085450
Giant komodos

>>55085697
Mtg calls them Indriks, from Indrikotherium.

>>55086851
Fuck off elves, humans are the master race

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>>55085173
Check out these videos. The descriptions have the animals' names.

https://youtu.be/AtVGwHPzyNc

https://youtu.be/rRiecAmGWHU

I like megatheriums. Have a republic of not!gauchos megatherium herders in the setting.

>>>>55085950
They are descended from dinosaurs, so they're dinosaurs. That's what matters.

>>55085697
>What would the locals call them? Paraceratherium would not pass the 'stable hand daily use' test

Thundercows.

>>55085349
>giant carnivorous armadillos.
Aren't regular armadillos carnivorous anyway

>>55086177
Christ, what a scene.

>>55085173
Woolceronts

rhinos made out of wool, they lived in Europe until the Vikings killed them all. Disgusting, really.

>>55085548
what is that horn for?

>>55085697
just like hippopotamus, right?

dumbass

>>55086112
>Dire Megistotherium
Check and mate.

>>55088373
I hope this is bait

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>>55086198
I can do you one better

>>55085697
People who play ark have to deal with them on the regular and use the term "Paracer". Rolls of the tongue easily and is easily extendable to the full name.

>>55085586
Were they poisonous also, like modern platypuses?

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Andrewsarchus. Basically a wolf the size of an elephant.

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The marsupial "lion" and it's killer thumbs

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>>55088373
We call those hippos you mong.

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Pterygotus and friends

>>55088308
That's it's nose.

Why everything on Earth was much bigger than it is now?
Will all existing species if leaved alone evolve into even more small creatures with enough time?

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Those reptiles that decided to become mammals were also cool.

>>55090635
The atmosphere was more oxygen rich way back when, giving these things enough air to breath to enable their huge size

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>>55086450
Half a meter shorter, but it more than makes up for it in the all important mouth-to-body-size ratio.

>>55085570
Oh 'e's a beaut!

>>55090635
We're just now exiting a major climatic period. Large animals tend to be specialists or otherwise live in relatively precarious ecological niches. Since the end of the last Ice Age most of the megafauna has gotten smaller in size because the largest creatures just couldn't survive the rapid climate shift.

That, plus the fact that early humans probably hunted those struggling large animals most aggressively, lead to them all pretty quickly disappearing over the last million years or so. There's no real trend towards smaller animals, except in regards to invertebrates due to lower oxygen in the atmosphere.

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>>55090635
It depends on the enviromental pressures, if being big is a problem it will give advantage to the smaller ones to live and reproduce, that's what happens on islands.

But getting bigger can help sometimes, sometimes small animals become bigger to fill an echological niche that made itself available due to enviromental change or the extinction of previously existing animals.

>>55090650
>reptiles
Not really.

>>55090256
And it's more like a pig in the shape of a wolf.

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>>55090772
>Not really.
What were they then?

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>>55090772
I had been led to believe it was more like a goat in the shape of a wolf.


Also, land crocodiles.

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>>55085173
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZbmywzGAVs

>>55090635
A lot of this is just picking the biggest things that have existed. Not necessarily living at the same time.

Modern Elephants are pretty fucking big even compared to a lot of megafuana, and the Blue Whale is the biggest animal that has ever lived

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>>55090837
Y'know, most of the time psuedoscience is boring garbage. Occasionally though, it produces extremely cool garbage. This is one of those times.

>>55090722
>Oh 'e's a beaut!
I miss him /tg/. :(

>>55090675
how do we bring the oxygen back? We need to be bigger, we need to stop humans from being manlets

>>55090635
Whales are bigger than ever, or they were until very recently (like with elephants' tusks)

>>55091046
Humans could get big irrespective of the amount of oxygen. Oxygen only becomes a problem for insects because of the way they breath. Vertebrates don't care about it.

>>55091079
so we would be small?
Also, there's no way we get this amount of xygen again after that FUCKIN ASTEROID MADE EVERYTHING GO DOWNHILL

>>55086851
Humans are the surviving "elves" of Earth, it's the hobbits (Homo floresiensis), giants (Gigantopithecus), orcs (Neanderthals) and others who are extinct now.

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>>55090969
I was about to say the same thing. Fake, but cool.

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>>55090969
Eh, it's not that bad really. IMO it's just as valid as current theories, and he has a point abut the eyes and the primate characteristics.

>>55090969
>>55091135
Can a more anthropologically inclined anon explain why this is definitely fake? I mean, it sounds pretty plausible in the video.

bumop

>>55086589
>baboon orcs
Thank you for this.

>>55091166
Well for one thing, it completely disregards that Neanderthals were humans by modern anthropological standards. Also, Half a million years is nothing on an evolutionary scale, and it certainly isnt enough for Neanderthals to become black-skinned, red-eyed demons.
Although i will concede he has points about skull shape and diet.

it blows my mind that 90% of all species are extinct.

>>55091272
I agree with you about the eyes but I think he also might have a point about the body hair, so they'd end up with a more sasquatch-y look.

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>>55091166
At a basic level, neanderthals just aren't that different from modern Homo Sapiens. Both genetically and physically. The bone structure is somewhat different, but it's derived from close enough ancestors that such a radical difference is pretty much out of the question. Especially stuff like the eyes.

Also, look at the nasal structure of a human, a neanderthal, and a chimp. A neanderthals nose wouldn't be flatter and more apelike compared to a human, it would actually have been larger and more pronounced like every actually scientific reconstruction.

Moreover, there's no archaeological evidence to support the predation theory, and there's actually genetic evidence that the humans and neanderthals interbred extensively enough that anyone with European or Asian ancestry has at least 1-2% neanderthal genetics.

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>>55091166
Pseudoscience tends to be like that. Neandertal is slightly more robust (in the archaeological /physiological sense) than h. sapiens, but they were not the ape men this guy is trying to make them out to be.
The nose bit is especially wrong since we can tell by they way the nose part of the skull juts out that they have a fleshy nose like us, unlike gorillas which are totally flat against the skull.
Also, there is a lack of published journalistic data to support any of the claims made in the video or his book.
>>55091301
More like 99.9%
>>55091243
Unnecessary but appreciated nonetheless
>>55091309
No data suggests they were furrier than us.

>>55091365
Scientists also used to claim that praying mantises eat their mates 99% of the time and that England had a peasantry.
The truth was that the scientists were lazy fucks who had half-assed the research.
Forgive me if I trust the idiots ranting on the street corners about as much as actual scientists.

>>55091351
from what i can see in this image neanderthals were superior to us, why the fuck didnt they win

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>>55091351
Otzi the iceman mummy also has a lot of Neandertal DNA compared to most humans.
>>55091365
Gorilla skull for comparison.
>>55091400
That's fine, most people often confuse real science with psuedoscience and conspiracy theories because the current economic system benefits from ignorance.
Distrust in science is natural for those that don't understand the prerequisites and mountain of research that goes into determining the truth.
Science can be boring and unrewarding and that's why some people misuse science to sensationalize topics the public cares little about since it is the only way for them to get any attention.
These are like scientific parasites who live off of the discoveries of others and use information to profit themselves rather than contribute to the universal body of truth that is available to all.

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Pretty much any Australian animal from prehistory will do. Thylacoleo seems like an especially good fit what with the whole 'pouncing onto you back from the trees and using its fucking garden shear teeth and strongest bite force of ANY mammal to date to rip a chunk from the back of your neck' thing it had going. Megalania and scimitar cats (read, Komodos on steroids and social bengal tiger sized cats that A: were built for running over vast distances unlike most cats, and B: actually seemed to prefer hunting mammoth over other easier prey) are also good choices.
>>55085681
>implying the Haast eagle isn't vastly superior
GAZE UPON THE ONLY AVIAN PREDATOR OF MODERN MEN AND WEEP.

>>55091485
They grew to adulthood quicker than we did, which prevented them from building a culture and civilization and all the safeguards that entails. Kinda like Shadowrun Orcs
Also its less we beat them and more we fucked them into extinction
Never doubt the human libido.

>>55091400
So instead of basing your opinions on the reasonable assumptions of researchers who fully admit they could be wrong you choose to base your opinions on the imaginings of someone who simply decided how things work without even attempting to find conclusive evidence for their theories.

>>55085173
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Daeodon

The largest entelodonts could be almost 7 ft tall. Great fantasy beast.

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>>55091544
>we fucked them to extinction
It's funny cause it's true.

>>55085697
Parachutes

>>55085696
I mean both are decendants of the other so I would say it works pretty well

>>55091400
>Sometimes scientists were wrong
>Therefore a guy making completely baseless claims must be right

kys

>>55091620
Well..
Islam isnt exactly a descendant of Christianity.
Christianity was a direct evolution of Judaism, while Islam independently sprung out of Arabian Paganism with its influence from Zoroastrianism Judaism and Christianity allowing it to be considered "Abrahamic"

>>55091663
Actually Islam draws heavily on Nestorian Christianity IIRC. The Nestorians were present in pre-Islam Arabia.

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Anomalocarids.
Aegirocassis benmoulai, in particular. I bet it tasted like shrimp. Imagine if they could produce electric shocks in self-defense. Magical versions could be fucking wild.

>>55091043
We all do D:

>>55085529
682

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>>55091351
>virgin vs normie vs chad

>>55086198
Blangola?

>>55089504
Bump

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Littlefoot grew up, guys.

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>>55085697
Packadons

>>55091135
>that panda in the background not giving a shit

>tfw every mammal had both a tiny prehistoric relative and a giant prehistoric relative
There's so much variety to choose from!

>>55085612
Madagascar is huge and dodos were from Mauritius, but you are damn right

>>55091992
>the fucking rooster strutting in the background

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>>55087561

Giant ground sloths. They're mostly harmless and useless like normal sloths but the size of elephants!

>>55092104
That's actually its native habitat. Modern chickens are descended from junglefowl like that bird.

>>55091726
Jews?

>>55090624
What's that nose for?

>>55085697
Parcers or Paras.

>>55087908
Mostly insectivores or omnivores.

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>>55091043

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>>55092420
But wait, there's more!

>>55091400
>Scientists also used to claim that praying mantises eat their mates 99% of the time
Only a couple of them did. Not the scientific communities fault that journalists and the media took the speculation of a couple of fuckwits and ran with it.

They did the same fucking thing with Rudolph Schenkel.

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>>55092482

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>>55092498
>>55092482
Noice!

Might as well post the last two

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>>55092538
Man, reading these, I'm remembering him

>>55091544
>>55091485
also we can throw stuff farther, because due to their articulations they can't make the movement to throw from behind the body. We can run faster for longer distances due to the shape oh our hips, while they were limited to short bursts, and of course we could cover onger distances. And they probably needed far more food, being bulkier.
And combining all those things together means that their settlements could contain far less individuals than ours. Which could have contributed to less social intelligence on their part, and less intelligence in general.
Essentially they were dwarves and we were elves.
Dark skinned blue-eyed elves

>>55092277
Smelling?
>>55092266
Also Wut

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Elasmotherium.

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How about this? Arctotherium angustidens was a South American short-faced bear, big males of this species would have weighed 1.6 tonnes, standing 3.4 meters tall. It was the biggest (heaviest/tallest) mammalian predator ever! Twice the weight of a polar bear!

>>55093518
>Also Wut
He's making a trite joke about "jews have long noses".

You know cave bears in skyrim? They are based off an extinct species of bear.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cave_bear

they ate only meat unlike "normal" bears and were huge as fuck and had big ass ranges, they specialized on stealing the kills of other animals. They lived in caves and their are piles of their bones (and their prey) in them.

Its the most fun thinking about what animals probably hunted humans besides the ones alive today, golden eagles kill people but imagine being carried off by a giant eagle

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This fucking thing. Dunkleosteus. I've actually used this thing in campaigns before, they're mean as shit. They're older then dinosaurs, have armor made of bone, and had giant sharpened bone-helmets with bone-plates attached because "teeth" literally had not been invented yet.

It just swims up to fuckers and tears them to pieces with the bone-shards extending directly from its skull.

Patron Saint of Fuck Your Shit, and great patriarch of later scary swimy things.

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>>55085612
>>55085622
>>55085755
>tfw all these cool animals could have survived into modern times on islands but humans fucked it up

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>>55095465
>>55090862
>>55090844
>>55090613
A lot of people think that it was high concentrations of oxygen that allowed insects to have reach huge sizes following the Carboniferous period, but there is little to support that claim. There is not correlation between insect size and oxygen content except when there were few other organisms adapted to land.
What is more likely is that large insects could only exist without competition from more efficient organisms that came later.
When the world dried out a bit, reptiles overtook amphibians and would force insects to becomes smaller.

>>55085173

Titanboa. Giant snake, my god.

>>55085450
Fuckin abbos

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>>55095693
http://www.drivethrurpg.com/product/201174/Remarkable-Races-Submerged-The-Mrawgh?src=newest&filters=44235_0_0_0_0&manufacturers_id=2547

>>55085213
>terror bird
Now I think about giant birds yelling "Allahu Ackbar!"

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>>55092266
Yo yo yo, heil mein bruder lets watch dem cucks be all cucky and thirsty, yo

>55095819
Even if higher oxygen concentrations don't mean they HAVE to become bigger, it is a requirement for it. Unless they develop lungs or something to that effect

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>>55094034
The Short Faced Bear was a scary fucker.

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>>55098167
Bears in general are fucking terrifying.

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>>55098201

>>55098212
http://cloudline.org/LinguisticArchaeology.html

Found you a snake anon
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Titanoboa
And a croc
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Acherontisuchus
And a turtle
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stupendemys

>>55095797
Maybe we should kill all humans

>>55090650
What is this book?

>>55085173
>What extinct animals would make for good creatures in a fantasy setting?
Pretty much all of them.

>>55095693
Minor point, they were only 20ft, not 30.
Still damn impressive and scary though, seeing as that's still more than 3 times the length of your average dude and they weighed more than a ton

>>55095693
I showed my nephew a book that had these things in it and he calls them dunkleskunkles. I thought you guys might find that amusing.

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>>55097179
I'm just trying to squash the assumption that adding more oxygen will automatically make them bigger.
Pretty much everything on the food chain above them would have to go extinct for insects to ever get that big again.
They had a head start in the game and might never catch up again. But who is to say the Earths climate won't drastically change and suddenly favor invertebrates over everything else? Stranger things have happened.

>>55098819
>only 20 feet

Dude, being in the water with something a third that size is fucking terrifying

>>55098874
Exactly. They were saying they didn't need to be exaggerated to be scary.

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>>55085173
>>55090256
>>55090772
Actually, newer studies have found Entelodonts and the Andrewsarchus to be less of a giant pig and more of a fully terrestrial, carnivorous hippopotamus that was more capable of running. Which is even more terrifying.

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>>55090635
we hunted them to death, end of the story
some argue that climate change played a role too but pic here is pretty eloquent
you can see here list of all the cool critters we killed https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Quaternary_extinction_event

>>55091166
it's funny how he said that using human as basis for neanderthal is bullshit but using apes that are even more different is fine

>>55087858
we're descendant from fish
are we fish?

>>55091525
>Haast Eagle
>Australian
REEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEEE

>>55085173
Terror Birds, real life Chocobos. Only they will hunt you down, kill you, and eat you.

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>>55100807
Damn, forgot pic.

>>55085681
>Argentavis-Magnificens
wikipedia says it stood 1.5-2 m tall and had a wingspan of about 6
that pic seems to be overdoing it a bit

>>55100760
Pretty much.

To quote the biologist Stephen Jay Gould: "After a lifetime of studying fish, I've decided that there was no such thing as fish. The terminology of fish tells nothing about its biology. Biologically speaking, a salmon is more related to a camel than to a hagfish. Just because they are sea-dwelling creatures, doesn't mean they are more or less related to each other."

>>55100793
Suck a ram's knob, kiwi.

>>55091121
Neanderthals weren't orcs. Neanderthals were dwarves.

>lived in caves
>shorter than humans
>everyone had beards, even the ladies

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>>55085755
>I also love the fact that at some point, less than 200k years ago on Malta giant swans hunted tiny elephants. And that's awesome!

holy shit! Is this where Philip Pullman got the idea from?
The mulefa
<----were hunted by giant birds similar to swans/looking like sailing boats in the distance

>>55090613
WE
WAZ
SEA
KANGS
AND
SHIEEEEEEEET

>>55086173
water dinos btfo
megalodons were still the scariest motherfuckers that ever existet in the deep

>>55090837
>https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=mZbmywzGAVs
>comments are disabled for this video

LMAO

>>55090685
>probably related to sheep

>>55100955
You are related to sheep. It is much more closely related to pigs and hippos.

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a giant fucking otter!

don't you laugh at otters, they're fucking beasts!
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=01iWx4476pY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=cB9ZDFUtteE
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=txM6PgiWNnU

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>>55085173
This motherjammer right here!

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No bonus point for me, but whatever, these lads are cool.

>>55091272
>>55091351
>>55091365
>>55091508
I agree that his visual depictions of neanderthals (especially the face) might be a bit off. BUT, a lot of what he says makes sense. Look at Inuits in Alaska, they have dark skin, because sunlight is constantly reflecting off of snow. So they don't need as much melanin as people who are indigenous to regions further south. So neanderthals having darker skin than Caucasian humans does make sense. As well as the fact that they would be nocturnal, those large eyes would make them go snow blind in a heart beat if they hunted during the day. Plus, retaining traits for thicker body hair, possibly even bordering on fur, easily makes sense when you are living in northern Europe during an ice age.

And last but not least, their behavior as rapist predators also is not deniable. Modern day humans hunt, rape, murder, and cannibalize each other all the damn time.

So his perspective is not entirely unrealistic, he just plays up the 2edgy4u grimderp angle to the maximum.

>>55101122
>Plus, retaining traits for thicker body hair, possibly even bordering on fur, easily makes sense when you are living in northern Europe during an ice age.
Not when you can just skin other animals for their hides.
Humans and Neanderthals both lost their fur, and both for the same reason: it made it much easier to prune yourself of parasites.

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>>55090837
so.. tolkien was a historian?

>>55095797
But anon, living on islands SHRINKS animals because less resources means the bigger creatures starve faster...

It's why the komodo dragon is such a manlet compared to it's ancestors.

>>55095797
tiny elephants were alive till a few thousands years ago, and I think techincally we could be able to clone them

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OUT OF MY WAY, NON-MEGATHERIUM FUCKING SHITS

>>55101142
Is there any evidence that they wore furs? Or is it just assumed that they did since they can craft tools?

>>55101155
Actually, he straight up was a legit historian. All of his elves and shit were based off of real myths and legends from through out Europe. He just gave it all different names and made it all mesh into a coherent whole, since many legends and myths arise in different time periods or change through the centuries.

Like how unicorns used to be bad ass mother fuckers with solid get black horns that killed dragons on a regular basis.

And now they have been reduced to MLP.

>>55090679
>WHITE WHALE
>HOLY GRAIL

>>55101182
Nah, there's also Island Gigantism.

>>55095797
Can't wait to add rhinos to the list.

>>55086140
Ask Leo where's my 20 bucks at?

>>55100397
How did we do such a terrible job in africa?

>>55100793
I never said haast eagles themselves were Australian, I was just saying they were superior to argentavis. Scimitar cats weren't Aussie either, at that point I want just thinking of what scary ass animals I knew existed way back when.

>>55101078
>Horn longer than an adult male human
I'm gonna have to call bullshit or archaeological fuckup on that one, the fucker wouldn't have been able to graze without overbalancing.

>>55101929
Any data to support that assertion or are you just guessing?

>>55101665
we co-evolved with african megafauna, and thus girafe, elephants and co were weary of humans, kind of like how wolves avoid humans, unlike dogs

>>55102416
Just a guess. Even the recreation of it is almost tipping over.

>>55085394
>Being this fucking dense and uneducated
>Bringing religion to it for further Dense Motherfucker points
Newsflash, bitch - birds ARE dinosaurs. The whole "birds and reptiles" as separate groups is outdated by what? 30 years? 40?

>>55090635
We're living in a planet-wide extinction event, in such times it is the large and overly specialized animals who die out first, while the small omnivores survived to become the next batch of big beasties later on when things calm down.

>>55090675
No, that only counts for insects and other arthropods with their inneficient respiratory system, for animals with lungs it barely matters when it comes to size.

>>55100397
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7rwUdL9qXjk

>>55085548
>giant fucking groundhog with an armored butt
>cool
Son. I am disappoint.

>>55102856
So we get landed with the most boring part of evolutionary history possible?

>>55103582
just enjoy the awesome animals we still have?
there were worse periods of time and there will be worse ones to come
go pet a rhino as long as you still can

>>55103582
Nah, the other way around: we made this part of history somewhat more boring than it already was by killing some interesting stuff.

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>>55085755
>>55100899
Island Dwarfism is helluva drug

>>55103582
Humans are literally the most interesting animal to ever exist.

>>55100760
1. Bony fish have bone skeletons instead of cartilage. This is one of their defining features. Humans have bone skeletons. Therefore, humans are fish.
2. Lobe-finned fish have two pectoral and pelvic limbs. Humans also have such limbs. Therefore, humans are fish.
3. Bony fish have lungs. Humans also have lungs. Therefore, humans are fish.
4. Lobe finned fish have teeth covered with true enamel. Humans also have enamel covered teeth. Therefore, humans are fish.
5. Fish have vertabrae and bilateral symmetry. So do humans. Therefore, humans are fish.

Recently the Chinese found a super-otter-weasel that is like 5 feet long. Anyone have art or info on that?

>>55102734
Skin is just an spectrum. Who cares if it's fur feathers or scales.

>>55095797
>he wants giant fucking swans to still be around

A regular swan could fuck me up- I'd get my fucking eyes ripped out by a literal giant swan that eats fucking ELEPHANTS

>>55085697
Para's or something.

>>55090256
>this is a goat

That still fucking blows my shit away.

>>55098619
Princeton field guide to dinosaurs

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Dunkleosteus. Megalodon.

>>55090650
What's this book?
Looks spiffy.

>>55104430
Found the human.

>>55104998
Um, no, it's not.

>>55098619
>>55105030

Pretty sure its one of Dougal Dixon's "Illustrated Enyclopedia of Dinosaurs" books.

This is very relevant to my interests. I'm working on a scifi setting where the PCs are researchers on an alien world loosely based on late Mesozoic/early Cenozoic earth. The idea is that this planet experienced fewer mass extinction events than Earth. The remnants of their version of the dinosaurs are still around, they've just continued to get more and more birdlike as the planet slips into an ice age. Not!terror birds are the apex predators of the area the PCs start in.

It's also going to be about bio-augmentation, with the PCs grafting claws and scaly hides and extra limbs onto themselves that are made in what amounts to a 3d printer for organs

>>55105444
Paleoshock! But seriously that sounds fun, if there is a need for sapient natives I'd recomend Nemo Ramjet's dinsauroids as a reference point. Also don't be afraid to leave some scaly throwbacks for fun encounters

>>55101114

>No bonus point for me
>doesn't know pterosaurs aren't dinosaurs

Surprise bonus points!

>>55105567
Thanks! The art for the dinosauroids is perfect for my not!terror birds. They're not going to be sapient, but I'm going to gradually drop hints that they're well on their way to it.

>Also don't be afraid to leave some scaly throwbacks for fun encounters
Definitely. That was sort of the point of setting the world up the way I did. The game is about fighting prehistoric monsters, so I wanted to give myself the widest variety possible.

>>55085697
Satans.

>>55096272
Explain?

>>55104729
>>55100859
can't argue with that. I'm now officially fish-kin

>>55107073
There used to be a massive forest covering a good deal of Australia but ancient abbos literally burnt it all to clear out living space, killing the entire ecosystem and turning Australia into what it is today. A majority of Australia's megafauna could have existed into the present day were it not for that.

>>55085223
pack your pack on a Paraceratherium named Packy today!

>>55107397
Well it was that or get eaten daily by giant lizards, i dont think anyone misses those days

>>55101929
They haven't find any fossilized horns but the structure of its skull hints towards it having a fairly big one so of course people who reconstruct dead creatures decided that it must have had the largest head-mounted penis extender were to exist on this earth.

>>55100160
Honestly, them being like hippos is scarier than them being like pigs.

>>55087554
You shut your bitch face d'hoine.

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>>55095693
If anyone's interested in a decently large plush of this bad boy, PRI makes one you can order.

http://www.priweb.org/paleopals/storeitemdetails.php?pubID=5810

>>55108748
You're not thinking about this right. We could have had DRAGONS.

>>55085362
This is some

>Implying owls are birds

meta post shit.

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>>55086198
>tfw your heart gets replaced by a mega baboon heart

>>55110376
But then wed have dragons eating our kids and our livestock, we dont need that, im just looking at it practically, had they not burned them up thy very likely would have been all killed off by them

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>>55110550
What, is the peasant afraid of a little dragon attack? Let us nobles have our monstrous mounts. Imagine, a king riding into battle on one of those. The positives far outweigh the negatives.

>>55110398
>implying owls aren't dinosaurs

>>55107397
Half of our ecosystems die without fire and are full to the brim with flammable oils. It's unlikely that human fire had that drastic an effect on an environment that basically self combusts every half-dozen years. Hunting and such using fire perhaps, but fire for living space is unlikely.

>>55110630
>devaluing human lif because it's "cool"

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>>55110234
I'll get that for my sister for Christmas. She won't know WHAT the fuck it is.

>>55110707
Let me learn you

http://theconversation.com/how-aboriginal-burning-changed-australias-climate-4454

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fire-stick_farming


All though you were right that it wasn't just for living space, abbos likely did fuck up the ecosystem using mass burnings, which is my main point.

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>>55095797
>he doesnt know how gay normal swans are
>he wants giant ones

>>55110550
Honestly, having dragons still around would probably be more valuable to humanity than having abbos around.

>>55101929
i mean if a hippos head is as heavy as the rest of its body, im sure this animal would have the neck/body structure to support having a giant horn

>>55110844
Swans are fucking assholes. They'll wreck your shit with the ferocity of a bag of flaming dragon dildos fired out of a battleship cannon.

>>55105444
>>55106225
look up The New Dinosaurs

>>55101078
Ah, a unicorn.

>>55102734
You're actually the one being the dense motherfucker here. His point is that the relation between modern birds and Mesozoic dinosaurs is similar to the relation between Muslims and Christians, which is that one is clearly directly derived from the other, but is also clearly different from what it was derived from in important ways. You cladistic zealots do get on my nerves, as you could just as well say that every living thing is just a hyperevolved archaean or something. I'm not sure what the current theories say is the oldest common ancestor of all living things, but your logic basically says that we shouldn't classify anything as being anything other than that. We have different words for different things, and if you don't see how a chickadee and a tyrannosaurus are different enough to deserve different names for the groups of creatures that are morphologically and chronologically similar to themselves and different from each other it's only because you've got your head too far up your ass.

>>55110725
Barely anyone would willingly live in Australia, other than abbos. I'd say given the chance to have tame, ridable giant monitor lizards still exist is alot more special than the safety of a group of people who in the course of 60,000 years invented not only the pointy stick, but also the the throwey wacky stick, and proceeded to burn down the majority of forest on the continent killing all the megafauna.

>>55111132
What kind of tribalistoc sociopathic attitude is that? Animal life is never more valuable then human life.

>>55111844
>Animal life is never more valuable then human life.

Last time I checked kangaroos don't steal the gas right out of my fucking car to huff it in a back ally.

t. Austrailian

>>55111944
Go back to pol please

>>55094652

To bad Cave Bears had a largely vegetarian diet and possibly were herbivores.

Which is mentioned in the wiki article too btw...

>>55112077
Short-faced bears on the other hand, were purely carnivorous motherfuckers.
>>55094034

>>55090862
bitch that's an anorexic baby cazador and if you dont get it off my screen im calling the police.

>>55111064
but his point is wrong.
Modern birds are dinosaurs. jurassic dinosaurs like the t-rex, not to mention protoavian dinosaurs are more closely related to birds than to other dinosaurs who existed at the same time as them and to the dinosaurs that existed before.

birds are dinosaurs just like we and the echidna and the mammals who existed 60 million years ago are mammals

>>55085173
Every time I see a thread like this, I get sad that I didn't become a Paleontologist as I dreamed about for most of my life. Instead I got a useless History Degree and now I'm a NEET. I could have been digging up extinct animals somewhere.

>>55112075
Well he ain't wrong.

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Where the shit are the mammoths at

It would be fucking cool if there was an eco-terrorist necromancer BBEG who's goal is to revive all dead species.

>>55112689
ALL the dead species? All 99.99% of previously existing species? I can see why he's a villain.

>>55112742
Yeah, that's why.

>>55112673
Dead. We killed them all.

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>>55090613
Yes

Eurypterids are the main niggers

>>55112673
If things go well, just gotta wait a decade or two
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Woolly_mammoth#Recreating_the_species

>>55103582
>So we get landed with the most boring part of evolutionary history possible?
Anon, you don't seem to understand.

Human beings ARE the planet-wide extinction event.

>>55100899
Damn, I almost forgot about those loveable rascals.

Do you think Mary was able to fit the whole "trunk", or did she have to use her hands?

>>55085173
all dire animals are actually ice age animals
before the end of the ice age, within the past few million years, there have been larger versions of practically every animal that exists today

>>55090256
theyve only ever found jaw fragments from these, i think theyre asspulling quite a bit

>>55090635
gravity is getting stronger

>>55110550
The only people who's be dead would be abbos. Australians likely wouldn't have even settled.
It's a pretty good deal, honestly.

>>55113847
What's the matter with "abbos"?

>>55113866
They're barely people. Worse than gypsies. Not worth more than giant animals.

>>55113912
Oh so you're from /pol/ please go and stay go>>55113912

>>55085173
Giant ground sloths
Gigantopithecus
Sabertooth
Megalodon
Glyptodon
Straight-tusked elephants
Mammoths
Dwarf elephants
M. permiana
C. giganteum
P. kirktonensis
Arthropleura
Australopithecus/Walking apes with primitive stone weapons
Paranthropus/Walking robust gorillas
Parailurus/Enormous red pandas

>>55113993
People who like abbos have never met one.

>>55113993
Oh, you're an over-emotional liberal idiot, please shut your stupid mouth.
Abbos are truly worthless.
Don't bring it up again, that's not the point of this thread.

>>55114024
Same thing with people who defend gypsies.

>>55091807
>virgin

Has literally never fucked a homo sapiens.

>normie

Fucks predominantly homo-sapiens.

>chad

Fucked so many homo-sapiens he went extinct.

Yep, checks out.

>>55113993
You don't have to be /pol/ to know there's a problem with abbos.

>>55114119
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=grqEjSfVuBg

>>55090807
Cambrian, mother nature's LSD fueled experimental phase.

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>>55112288
>t-rex
>jurassic dinosaurs

>>55095797
Becoming a selection pressure in and of yourself is no easy feat, anon.

Mankind has joined the ranks of the dinosaurs, the synapsids, all the great kings of the earth. Be proud, at least, that your time in the sun is now - that you and your kin are no longer prey.

>>55112288
Except for people who understand how animals evolve a lot better than they understand how words do, dinosaur means "reptilian creature that lived dozens of millions of years ago". We don't have a convenient name for "land dwelling mammal from millions of years ago", but if we did I hope you wouldn't claim that whales are those, because by definition they aren't. I understand the evolutionary argument you're making, but you need to understand the linguistic one I'm making. Words don't change their meaning for the convenience of scientists who realized that their classification system would fit new theories if they rearranged it a bit, at least not when those words are being used outside of the context of technical jargon used among said scientists. And there are good reasons to have different words for different large groups of animal species, even if the divisions between those groups are determined morphologically and/or chronologically rather than cladistically.

>>55114063
One doesn't have to be emotional or a liberal to be disgusted by people declaring large groups of people defined by their ancestry to be sufficiently worthless to deserve death. The thread is nearly at autosage anyway, I hope you're proud of yourself for shortening its lifespan.

>>55115158
Causing mass extinctions isn't so hard. If trees could do it so could a bunch of apes.

>>55115179
>Words don't change their meaning for the convenience of scientists
No, scientists define those words to begin with.

>>55115538
>what is better than a goose?
>a giant flightless goose with clublike wings

>>55115636
I like to imagine that prehistoric English people ate them

>>55105144
Yeah it is, sort of. It's an early ancestor of modern ungulates

>>55086140
Is it a MAGICAL liopleurodon?

>>55101205
https://anthropology.net/2009/06/26/neanderthals-dried-fresh-meat-wore-tailored-clothing-energy-study/

Pretty neat study about the evidence of them more than likely wearing clothing

>>55090675
Oxygen comes from plants, so nuking all our cities and allowing all the forests and jungles to regrow might be a good start. The nuclear survivors can then fight giant monsters for the last tin of beans!

>>55116498
Sounds like fun

>>55112075
Abbos have been known to get run over while lying on roads after huffing gas.

>>55085259
>three metres
>28 inches
Be consistant with how you write numbers, don't jump between numbers and letters and choose either metric of imperial, not fucking both.
What are you, a ten year old?

>>55102875
This, when it comes to animals with lungs what holds creatures back is overheating to the point that your blood boils your brain.

That's why the largest living creatures EVER, evolved in the oceans, where the water helps keep them cool. And why elephants have large ears, they flap them like fans to keep themselves cool. Plus they are filled with large veins, so they can expel heat directly from their blood via the thin skin.

That, and the fact that being so massive means that you could cause all the veins in your brain to explode whenever you bent over. Giraffes evolved special valves in their veins to stop this from happening whenever they drink water.

>>55103582
No, the most boring part of evolutionary history was the time when all life was single celled organisms.

>>55090742
Weasel Deer hunt a Rabbit Deer

>>55110844
>not knowing that swans are just canadian geese that evolved to look pretty so you would underestimate them

>>55116391
Cool, thanks for the link anon.

>>55116498
Except for the fact that plants only create oxygen during the day. Once the sun sets the entire process is reversed.

Think of it as the plant equivalent of taking your batteries out and charging them so you can use them again tomorrow, once the sun rises.

So during the day, sure, there would be tons of oxygen. But during the night we would all be gasping like fish stranded on dry land.

>>55117676
I prefer metric, but I didn't make the picture.

>>55114369
Thank you for this.

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>>55086851

I have a vague idea for a setting that is like that. More background stuff really. Ice age setting, with different hominid societies interacting. One of them develops industry and causes climate change, eventually leaving earth to become the Greys. Few thousamd years later you have Chair Force doods fight them with Orions and armed space shuttles throughout the Cold War.