#10 Most Powerful Prehistoric Wild Cats

[myth-lord]

MY PERSONAL TOP 10 PREHISTORIC CREATURES

Dinosaurs have always inspired me, they were among my first love and hobby and as a 5 year old child I discovered many of them in one of my father’s old Dinosaurs books.

While most of the children of my age only talked about the same boring dinosaurs (looking at you Tyrannosaurus Rex and Stegosaurus) over and over again, I always tried to sneak in more obscure dinosaurs during the conversation, and every time they mentioned Triceratops I would drop in Pachyrhinosaurus or Styracosaurus, and every time they mentioned Rex I threw in some Dilophosaurus, Daspletosaurus and Carnotaurus, Stegosaurus would be countered with Kentrosaurus and Wuerhosaurus.

While my love for Prehistoric creatures has faded over time, I still take much inspiration from them in my more recent and newer hobbies such as Mythology creatures and many cryptids are taken straight from my dinosaurs books.

But now for my 10 favorite Prehistoric Creatures of all time:

10) Phororhacos = Probably my favorite birds of all times, so nasty  and dangerous looking, must have been a hell back then for the horses that weren’t bigger than dogs back in the days!

09) Helicoprion = While most people get a boner when they hear the name Megalodon, I find that oversized shark to be somewhat dull, as it just looks like a big White Shark, Helicoprion was a bizarre, almost alien shark that live many million years before the biggest shark of all time, Megalodon, and it looks a million times as cool with the strange saw-like lower jaw.

08) Pachycephalosaurus / Stygimoloch = Head-Charging dinosaurs (the entire family-line) have always inspired me since I was a child, they look very fierce and nasty for a herbivore dinosaur, pretty much like Therizinosaurus. Stygimoloch looks even cooler with those sharp horns around it’s skull.  

07) Andrewsarchus = The biggest predatory land mammal of all time is the awesome looking Andrewsarchus, related to modern whales these bizarre carnivores have the most fearsome maws of the entire animal kindom!

06) Tanystropheus = Since the moment I saw a picture of a group of Tanystropheus fishing from the cliffs in some old Dinosaur-based book I was hooked on them! These bizarre creatures have such insane long necks that the creature may break records with it.

05) Gorgonopsid = Like I said in my earlier post today, Gorgonopsid are cool Mammalian-reptilians from the Permian age. I also love other Mammalian-reptilians such as Dimetrodon. While Smilodon and other Sabretooth Cats also share those fangs, I’m still more a fan of the Gorgonopsid.

04) Baryonyx = My all time favorite carnivorous dinosaur, that look has always intrigued me, having the crocodilian maw and the big claws with which it probably fished for prey. I also LOVE that name for some reason. ARK: Survival Evolved made me fall in love with these dinosaurs even more. I’d also like to give a shoutout to Spinosaurus and Suchomimus, which are related to the Baryonyx, and also very awesome.

03) Thylacoleo = My favorite Mammal of all time, while they look like strange big prehistoric cats they are actually carnivorous marsupials. They lived in trees and could probably climb like champions, dropping on giant kangaroo’s and wombats that also lived in that same age in Australia. There is a chance that these bizarre creatures have the most powerful bite of all creatures ever existed, especially for their size.  

02) Dunkleosteus = How can you not like this prehistoric monster fish? Their armored maws and heads, their sheer size, their awesome appearance coming straight out of some demonic nightmare. Everything about these Carbonian Fish I love! While I’m kinda glad these nightmarish fish are extinct, it would have been cool to see what they would have looked like in the wild.

01) Therizinosaurus = My all time favorite Dinosaur is a bizarre herbivore with claws which put Freddy Kruger to shame. One of the last dinosaurs left alive, they would probably have little to fear from predators of that time such as Tyrannosaurus and Tarbosaurus. I wished they would use them in Jurassic Park already!

HONORABLE MENTIONS

Dilophosaurus – Loved it FAR before Jurassic Park turned it into a small spitting creature.

Carnotaurus – That name, that look, so much scarier than Overusedosaurus Rex.

Shantungosaurus – Far bigger than Tyrannosaurus Rex, this duckbilled dinosaur must have been a force to be reckoned with.

Dimorphodon – Small but probably deadly! I could see these small pterosaurs work like some small flying piranha’s.

Quetzalcoatlus – The world’s biggest flying creature ever to roam the skies, and a cool name taken from an Aztec God.

Titanoboa – Worlds biggest found snake, and I used to like snakes!

Xiphactinus – That is one ugly motherf*cker fish! But very cool and big!

Rhizodus – An ancient monstrous fish that could also walk/crawl on land, the most terrifying fresh-water fish ever to have lived probably.

Arthropleura – Giant centipedes? Yes please!

Eurypterid – These giant Sea Scorpions from ancient times have always impressed me with their looks and sizes!

Megatherium – Hard to realize that modern Sloths are descendants of these awesome titans! No offense modern sloths, I love you too!

Doedicurus – Armadillo’s the size of small cars.

Megaloceros – The coolest and largest of stags, with magnificent, mystifying, titanic antlers.

Indricotherium – Earth biggest land-mammal ever! Named after a Mythological creature, the giant Russian Unicorn Indrik. When young I always thought these were giant relatives of horses, but they are actually giant Rhinocerosses. 

Daeodon – Called the pigs from hell for good reason, these ugly, evil-looking horrors probably have haunted many other prehistoric beasts nightmares.

Basilosaurus – The most badass of whales, and also the most evil looking one!

Procoptodon – Kangaroo’s more than 3 meters high, I kinda wished they would still have been alive today!

Kaprosuchus - Awesome high-legged land-based crocodilians! 

And I also really love the entire Ankylosaurus-Family-Line, from Nodosaurus, to polacanthus and from Saichania to Ankylosaurus itself. 

P.S: The pictures of both Basilosaurus and Phororhacos are from the first Dinosaurs book I’ve ever read. 

[handeaux]

Did Monstrous Lions Prowl Prehistoric Cincinnati? (And Do They Still Exist?)

Did gigantic lions, 25 feet tall and 60 feet long, really rampage through Cincinnati in ancient times, gobbling up mastodons like so much popcorn? That’s what scientific authorities believed at one time. In fact, U.S. President Thomas Jefferson instructed the Lewis & Clark expedition of 1804-06, to look for living examples of such beasts.

Reports of these enormous carnivores originated from a Cincinnati doctor who got swindled by a greedy British charlatan. The doctor in question was William Goforth, who is mostly known today as the teacher of young Daniel Drake.

Before Daniel Drake became his student, Goforth built a thriving practice as a frontier doctor around Maysville, Kentucky. People in that area knew about Big Bone Lick and Goforth would have heard about the gigantic bones found there. Shortly after he moved to Cincinnati around 1800, Goforth mounted his own expedition into the wilds of Boone County, where he excavated a large collection of bones.

Word of Goforth’s discoveries reached naturalist (and artist) Charles Wilson Peale in Philadelphia. Peale had a museum in which a mastodon skeleton was first displayed in America. Peale told his friend Thomas Jefferson about Goforth’s collection and Jefferson told Meriwether Lewis – on his way to meet up with William Clark at Louisville – to stop in Cincinnati to see what all the fuss was about.

Lewis informed Jefferson that Goforth had compiled quite an impressive display of gigantic bones. He procured a few, including teeth of the mastodon and the mammoth as well as a mammoth tusk, and sent them by riverboat to New Orleans for shipment to Jefferson. Those specimens were lost in an accident at Natchez.

Goforth’s discoveries also inspired the imagination of one “Captain” Thomas Ashe (aka Arvil, aka d’Arville, aka Ash) who was ex-military, ex-con, Irish passing as English, and certainly on the make. Ashe arrived in Cincinnati having heard that Goforth had shipped 10 large boxes of bones to Pittsburgh, on their way to Charles Wilson Peale in Philadelphia. Ashe convinced Goforth that a much better market for such outstanding specimens was New Orleans and got himself designated as Goforth’s agent to transact a sale there.

Ashe grabbed the bones from Pittsburgh and ferried them down the Ohio and Mississippi rivers to New Orleans, where he made a pretense of selling them. He turned down offers as high as $7,000, then had the bones shipped to England, where he presented them as his own discoveries. Ashe eventually sold Goforth’s specimens to a Liverpool museum.

To accompany this 1806 museum display, Ashe wrote an 80-page book titled “Memoirs of Mammoth, and Various Other Extraordinary and Stupendous Bones, of Incognita, or Non-descript Animals, Found in the Vicinity of the Ohio, Wabash, Illinois, Mississippi, Missouri, Osage and Red Rivers, &c., &c.” Pretty much the whole of this slim volume is plagiarized from various authors, including Doctor William Goforth, who is undoubtedly the source for Ashe’s description of a gigantic paw:

“It is the foot of a clawed animal, possibly of the order of ferae, for the claws are sheathed and retractile, in the manner of the cat, tiger, and lion. When this paw was dilated on its prey, filled with muscles, flexors, and cartilage, clothed with flesh, turgid skin, and hair, it must have covered a space of ground four feet by three.”

Just as impressive were the beast’s ribs. According to Ashe, this ferocious lion had:

“ . . . the powers, from the formation of his ribs, of extending and contracting his body to a great degree, in order to make more prodigious bounds . . . “

In other words, this lion could scrunch up like an accordion and then spring forth to attack its prey; a “collapsible lion,” as it were.

Based on the claws, ribs and segments of spine recovered, both Goforth and Ashe estimated this lion stood 25 feet tall and was 60 feet from nose to tail.

“His length 60 ft. his height 25; his figure magnificent; his looks determined; his gait stately; his voice tremendous! In a word, his body must have been the best model of deadly strength, joined to the greatest agility. And, from the force expressed by the visible seat of his muscles, his bounds must have been prodigious, enabling him to fall upon his prey, to seize it with his teeth ; tear it with his claws, and devour it.”

Most amazingly, Ashe, Goforth and Thomas Jefferson all believed that this giant, collapsible lion (as well as mammoths and mastodons) might still inhabit the unexplored deserts of the American West.

Ashe proposed naming this giant lion “Megalonyx” which is Greek for “giant claw.” This is another plagiarism. Thomas Jefferson had already suggested that name based on some bones found in West Virginia. At least Jefferson knew his Greek. Ashe thought “Megalonyx” meant “giant lion.”

Doctor Goforth complained about the theft, but Ashe was beyond the reach of the law. Goforth eventually abandoned Cincinnati and moved to New Orleans – he was enamored of French culture – where he invested the last decade of his life as an important political figure, helping Louisiana achieve statehood.

Ashe expanded his 80-page booklet into a three-volume memoir of his travels in America. Some of it was original; most was plagiarized. A lot of it was made up or just wrong. He followed his travelogue with a few novels and died in reduced circumstances.

The Megalonyx, scientists later discovered, was actually an herbivore, a giant ground sloth, ten feet long. It went extinct at the end of the last Ice Age, about 11,000 years ago.

The story of Dr. Goforth and his collapsible lion was told in a delightful 1940 book published by the Ohio Writers Project titled “Tales of Old Cincinnati.”

(Thank you to Vernon Shafer for suggesting this post.)