And/or turn them on or both, given the reception of the last listing!
Do please note that this list is far less vore-related than the last one, though there are still plenty of predators here that could have eaten a human with little difficulty!
Quetzalcoatlus
Wait... a pterosaur? Most certainly ladies and gents! Currently one of the largest known pterosaurs known to science, this gigantic beast was tall enough to look a giraffe in the eyes.
Yes, a giraffe.
While its exact diet is still debated at the moment, it's very likely that this creature survived much like a stork given the similarities between the two species' head and beak shapes. That and this creature had no teeth, so while it may not have been the top predator of its day (that went to T. Rex) it would have eaten its prey whole like many modern birds. With its size, that would have definitely involved a small child if they had existed in the same time.
Kaprosuchus
Moving back a few million years to the mid-cretaceous period is this gorgeous face of a croc that only a mother could love. Kaprosuchus, aka "boar croc." During the age of the dinosaurs, crocodiles had a hayday of various evolutionary lines, even including several herbivorous species, and Kaprosuchus was one of these experiments in the history of life. While the exact way it hunted remains unknown, what stands out about his animal is that its eyes faced forwards (unlike modern crocodiles and most modern lizards) giving it binocular vision: a trait only found in terrestrial animals (primarily hunters). So in other words, this would have been a croc that could get out of the water and chase you... fun thought!
And while it's wildly inaccurate, here's kaprosuchus from a show that I enjoy in "Primeval" where it was depicted more like a giant cat than a crocodilian, which I thought was pretty cool!
Dire Wolves
I'm sure many people here have heard this term before and are probably wondering if this isn't a reference to an rpg game like Warcraft or Elder Scrolls when seeing this term. But rest assured fellow vore fans, these were a very real creature. They wouldn't have been all that intimidating to see in comparison to a normal wolf, but they are slightly larger and much more heavily built, more than likely evolved to cope with the more heavy duty prey items available during the ice age such as the bison and camels that lived on the plains.
For reference, none of these guys would be eating a person whole in reality, but they were still big for canids, an would probably be about the size of a boxer dog.
Dunkleosteus
Now we're getting to the big guns! Dunkleosteus is a prehistoric fish from the devonian period, and was an apex predator of the seas until the devonian-carboniferous extinction. While not the biggest predator on this list, it was a good 6 meters (about 20 feet) long and, perhaps most terrifyingly, didn't have any teeth.
"But what about those sharp things in it's mouth?" Those my fellow voreraphiles, are actually pieces of its SKULL.
The late devonian period was actually dominated by a family of now-extinct armored fish, of which Dunkleosteus was the largest known (to date).
Dunkleosteous set itself apart from its brethren by being one of the earlier fishes with actual jaws (most others up until that point were simply suck-feeders. And not only was it able to bite, it had an immensely strong 4-point anchor jaw system that would have allowed it to open and close its mouth very quickly, able to use the suction of the water to bring prey in close, then snapping its jaws shut to shatter the bone armor of its victims.
Despite preluding the dinosaurs of the mesozoic era by well over 100 million years this was one of the world's first super-predators.
Liopleurodon/Pliosaurus
Okay, I'm cheating a bit here by putting two prehistoric predators in the same spot. But let's be honest here: they're both very similar animals, though one is a bit larger than the other.
Both are members of the pliosaur family, which were the ruling predatory animals of the Jurassic period of the Mesozoic era, so they would have been neighbors with Stegosaurus, Diplodocus, and Allosaurus if the dinosaurs thought it'd be an even remotely good idea to go near the water.
What's particularly fascinating about these creatures is that they appear to have been guided by smell, rather than sonar: particularly peculiar when considering they were land-breathing mammals.
Other than that, there's one thing that's for sure: don't go swimming in Jurassic waters unless you want to be lunch.
Livyatan
Wait, another sea creature? C'mon Hagglesmite, why so many?
Well... because sea predators are huge!
And no that's not a blue whale before you get all excited.
Livyatan was a prehistoric sperm whale that lived during the miocene epoc, about 8-9 million years ago. What makes it so interesting is that it's skull is a bit of a hybrid between the modern orca and modern sperm whales with large teeth on the upper jaw (modern sperm whales have no upper teeth. It's thought that this whale ate other whales.
I repeat, this whale ate other whales.
It was eventually outcompeted in the evolutionary race by orcas and megalodon, but the gentle giants of whales that we know today used to have it much, much rougher with this hypercarnivore around.
Smilodon
Other than T-rex, the wrongly nicknamed "Sabre-Toothed Tiger" (psst, spoilers, it's not a tiger at all and might be more of a jaguar) is probably the most popular of the prehistoric predators out there. To say the least, its vorish potential is basically zilch since it specifically evolved teeth to rip out it's prey's throat, but it's still a cool looking cat, and because of its popularity I figured I'd post it here.
Some other prehistoric cats that bear mentioning are homotherium, the only known cat that is believed to have been a specialist stamina hunter, as well as the Eurasian Cave Lion which lived at the same time as smilodon.
Prionosuchus
A shout out to Cowrie for this one on my last list, as I didn't even know this creature existed!
One of the most interesting things I love about studying prehistoric animals is an element known as "convergent" evolution, which is where animals from different evolutionary genetics evolve similar traits for similar environments. Shown above is a creature that looks like a crocodile, probably lived like a crocodile, and even part of its name, "suchus," means crocodile... only, it isn't a crocodile. Prionosuchus is actually an animal older than crocodiles, and was one of the larger amphibians of the mid-Permian period. It wasn't QUITE large enough to eat a full-grown person whole, but it has been estimated to be about 9 meters (31 feet) long with a meter-long skull, making it capable of eating a child.
Elasmosaurus
And now we have our final outing into the sea (seriously, the ancient oceans were a horrible place to be) with elasmosaurus... or to those of us who remember as kids: "the weird dinosaur with the long neck and penguin flippers." Also a member of the pliosaur family (though specifically in the plesiosaur sub-family) that actually survived its huge-headed and short-necked brethren named above well into the cretaceous period. What is really interesting about this creature is that it's been theorized that it hunted by using its neck to dart into schools of fish from below: a neck so long (it had 72 neck vertebrae, you only have 7 in yours) would allow the bulk of the body to remain out of the fishes' view, making for an effective 'stealth attack' of sorts.
It's thought to have been a dedicated piscivore, and while it may not have had a stretchy jaw like a snake has, it was definitely big enough that with a little imagination it could be used as a fun predator:
Short Faced Bear
And so we end this list with perhaps one of the most terrifying predators that I know about, and that is the short-faced bear. Wait, how is a bear scary when compared to everything else here?
Weelllll...
It was basically only the biggest bear EVER.
Compared to the two largest terrestrial carnivores alive today, it was able to stand 3.5 METERS (12 feet) tall off of the ground! The polar bear can only stand up at nine feet, and the grizzly at about eight feet.
To put things in focus, that's tall enough to look an elephant in the eye!
And just for comparison:
What is particularly fascinating about this creature to me is that upon doing isotope tests in fossil bones (which is how scientists figure out what predators were eating) it had no specialized diets: horses, camels, bison, and even mammoths were on this animal's to-eat list. While that makes it sound like a hyper-carnivore for the ages, studies of its bones have shown that it wasn't designed to hunt: it was built to travel, much like a camel.
After several more tests including fossilized brain case scans, it's been determined that the short faced bear was the ultimate scavenger, bullying other predators off of their hard-earned kills, possibly even humans!
Of course, if I had this guy staring me down, I'd probably run like hell too.
That's all for now folks! What did you think? Is there a favorite prehistoric beastie that I missed? I'm happy to do more of these if you all like them
For now, have a fantastic night!
The first list that I produced has a lot more animals that would be able to swallow a person, this list is more "cool prehistoric predators"
