This content highlights lesser-known giant prehistoric animals that are often overshadowed by more popular creatures like dinosaurs, aiming to bring attention to these fascinating and massive ancient beings.
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fierce, giant, and extinct. When I say
those three words, what do people
typically think of? Well, they first may
picture a dinosaur of some sorts,
perhaps a T-Rex or some kind of sarapod.
But then if I say no dinosaurs, one then
might move on to a giant terasaur,
mosasaur, croc, mega shark, a giant from
the ice age, etc., etc. The point is,
when we talk about giant prehistoric
animals, there are a few that pretty
much always come to mind, leading to
documentaries and movies frequently
featuring the same type of animals on
repeat. However, because of this focus,
certain giants on Earth throughout the
years have been found which simply have
fallen to the sidelines, overshadowed
again by the quote unquote fan
favorites. And personally, I think these
forgotten faces need a little love, too.
As if you really look through history,
you'll find that there are many giants
walking about that most people have
never heard of, let alone seen. And I'm
not talking about unknown animals that
belong to groups that are already
wellknown for being huge. Instead, we're
going to be taking a look at animals
that hopefully you didn't know existed
in nearly any sense of the word. as seen
with this specimen, now known as the
beast of Lutu. If you have heard of this
before, your paleo lore is king-like,
and perhaps you don't need even watch
this video, but stick around anyway.
Now, for everyone else, what exactly is
the beast of Lutu? Well, an amphibian
like no other, that's what. For hundreds
of millions of years, from the
Carboniferous all the way up to the
Cretaceous, one could say that the realm
of amphibians was pretty much dominated
by just one group, the Temnospondi, who
had been found all over the world and
came in virtually every shape and size,
with some being teenytiny and others
absolutely giant. And so this order was
extremely diverse with one way of
thinking about them is that they're
pretty much the mammal equivalent of the
placentals. So unsurprisingly there were
multiple large families that made up the
Temnospond and one of them was the
Brachiopeday a family which specifically
emerged during the final days of the
Perian and were quite successful up
until the Jurassic. The members of this
group just like the order varied in size
and location but they were all
carnivores who are believed to have
lived a lot like crocodiles being
opportunistic hunters only restricted in
diet by their size. And for many years,
amphibians from this family were
regarded as having been small to
medium-sized, not massive. Until that
is, a fragmented piece of a jaw was
found in South Africa. That seems to
have changed everything, as this
mouthpiece was huge. Now, it has not
been confirmed if it belonged to an
already identified genus or rather
represents a brand new one, but either
way, it has been classified to have come
from a brachiop. And when comparing this
jaw piece to related members, we come to
the conclusion that this guy might have
reached 7 m or 23 feet long, which for
comparison, the largest amphibian alive
today, the Chinese giant salamander, is
only 1.8 m or 5.6 ft long. So not even a
third of the length. And the beast of
Lutu, as it was aptly named, wasn't just
long, but also ridiculously chunky and
robust, having had a whopper of a mouth
that could possibly swallow even a
humansized prey whole, and also weighed
multiple tons. the body that is not the
mouth. Currently, it's believed to have
lived in the waterways of the Elliot
Formation during the very early stages
of the Jurassic where it might have
terrorized numerous kinds of animals in
need of a drink, including multiple
theropods, smaller sarapotamorphs, and
ornithysians among others. And so far,
it's actually the largest known
carnivore from the entire formation,
dinosaurs included. So, so much so for
this being the age of dinosaurs. But
with this said, I will mention that
obviously the jaw piece is
fragmentaryary. So it remains to be seen
just how accurate its body size estimate
is. However, even if the beast lutu does
turn out to be a bust, it's still fine
because we actually have other obscure
giant amphibians, too. Such as the
possibly longer, albeit lighter built
Prinosucus, which hailed from Perian,
Brazil, or the alligator-headed
Mastadonsaurus from Triacic Europe,
which could have exceeded 6 m or 20 ft
and also held a more robust build and
made a great living by feeding a large
fish as well as others of its own kind.
Seeing that evidence for cannibalism
amongst this two-tonon plus creature is
very much known of. So, the next time a
show or documentary wants to make a
certain area come off as a bit
horrifying, I say we go with a giant
amphibian. They're just that dang cool.
And you know what else is cool? A giant
animal that looks like a dinosaur but
wasn't. And is something most people
have never heard of before. And so, what
am I talking about? Well, none other
than the silos, of course. Now, if
you're an avid watcher, you might
remember this guy, but I still feel like
this is a relatively unknown creature on
the grand scale of things, which is
honestly shocking when you realize that
this was the largest animal to ever
stand on two legs that was not a
dinosaur. And yes, it can be hard to
believe that this was in fact not a
dinosaur, but it really wasn't. Instead,
what you're looking at is a type of
popsoid who were essentially an advanced
clay to pseudouians that were one of the
earth's most abundant animals during
various parts of the triacic and are
generally known for having been a bit
unusual with some having sails, others
being robust quadripeds and then some
like the silosucas walking around on two
legs. The silosucus specifically
belonged to the Papasaur family, the
Chuvasauriday. And perhaps not
shockingly, it was its largest member as
well as being one of the largest
non-dinosaurs of all time. as specimens
show signs of getting up to 10 meters or
33 feet in length, which by the way is
longer than your average fully grown
Allosaurus. And again, just to
reiterate, this was not a therapod. And
what makes this animal even more unusual
is that despite resembling a megaod,
which would thus make you assume that it
ate meat, was really just a friendly
giant. Well, as far as taste buds go, as
it was a beaked, toothless herbivore
that grazed from trees, sort of like a
two-legged sarapod. And coincidentally,
it actually lived alongside sarapods 2,
or at least sarapottomorphs, as this
beast hailed from the triacic Istigualto
formation of Argentina, which was home
to multiple dinosaurs, yet none were
absolute giants just yet, leading to the
psilocus likely being the largest animal
within the environment. And though much
more famous, I should mention that its
more carnivorous relatives could also be
equally massive, as you did have
pseudosukians like the facilucus, which
were just as long, but a tad bit more
toothy and angry, probably specializing
in feeding upon multi-tonon
saropotamorphs. In fact, it even seems
that the Vasilucus might have been the
biggest terrestrial predator ever,
discounting dinosaurs, and the largest
fully land predator to walk on four
legs. And so given its attributes, it's
not that surprising that it recently
even got its own Hollywood debut in the
movie 65. But I should mention that it
didn't actually really live 65 million
years ago, as the movie title would have
you believe. Rather, like the Silosucus,
it lived during the late triacic. But
you know what is still waiting for a
shot to being a movie's big bad? A
creature that I think would make for a
great Jaws replacement, the Noasaurus.
This was just one member of the often
forgotten about order of marine reptiles
which were aptly named the noasaurs and
who lived all across the world's oceans
for much of the triacic period and they
were in many ways superficially similar
to the plesiosaurus having long body
plans elongated necks forlims and grass
out builds and typically they even
shared a similar diet with many members
using needle-like teeth to catch fish
amongst other similar animals yet for
the most part they've remained much more
unknown to the general public than their
distant relatives and I think this has
something to do with the plesiosaurus
being much larger as typically
nothasaurus weren't that big. Usually
maxing out to 2 m or 6.5 ft. So large
enough to give you a heart attack in the
water but probably not large enough to
the point that it would have actually
bothered you. However, this notion about
their size has slowly started to change
after the discovery of massive specimens
which hailed from Triacic China and
Europe. And these new specimens often
made up of portions of the face and
varying teeth show that two species
Noasaurus Gigantius and Jeni could
measure up to 7 m or 23 ft long and were
structurally much more robust than their
fellow kin. Leading researchers to
believe that fish wasn't the only grub
these species were restricted to. In the
case of the Jeang specimen, it's even
thought that the current estimates are
too low and that it really might have
been able to reach greater lengths. Now
admittedly we have been kind of spoiled
in the realm of marine giants thanks to
the likes of the megalodon or predatory
whales but don't forget even at 7 m the
nothosaurus is one of the largest marine
predators that wasn't a whale mosasaur plesiosaurichthosaur
