15 Animals That Were Scarier Than Dinosaurs

we like to think of dinosaurs as the scariest animals that have ever roamed the earth but as terrifying as this may be to hear dinosaurs are barely the tip of the iceberg [Music] all sorts of horrors have stomped their way around our planet and some were so much worse than dinos these are animals that were scarier than dinosaurs number 15 lyopleurodon the lyopleurodon is an animal that sends shivers up your spine just looking at pictures of it but imagine if it were still here today it is undoubtedly far scarier than any dinosaur that's for sure the lyopleurodon was thought to exist around 166.1 to 139.8 million years ago it was a marine reptile known as a plesiosaur but it was not a dinosaur the first fossil of it was found in 1873. what scientists have managed to find out so far is that it was around 20 feet long had a short neck and could weigh as much as 150 tons it also had giant teeth with jaws as long as almost 10 feet and flippers as long as 13 feet it most commonly featured in waters around europe and was found in large numbers during the jurassic period the lyopleurodon most likely behaved in the same way as apex predator sharks which definitely makes us glad it went the way of the dinosaurs it may have swum at depth look for silhouettes of animals or humans on the surface then attacked with deadly force we need to send a gift hamper to whoever gave this creature its marching orders like this video smash the subscribe button and click the notification bell right now or slenderman will come from under your bed while you're sleeping number 14 dunkley osteous we all know that the great white shark is a scary animal that we don't like getting too close to if we do who knows whether we'd make it back to shore alive our guess is no but did you know there used to be a fish that was far more dangerous than the great white and potentially every other dinosaur the dunkleosteus is a fish we're so pleased no longer exists the dunkleosteus lived during the devonian period which is around 380 million years ago it was a placoderm which is an arthropod fish and it was the top predator of the paleozoic era we've got no reason to doubt that for this fish grew to around 33 feet long perhaps how this fish managed to be at the top of the food chain was due to its armor plating it was an artha dyer which is part of the placodermi family it was able to protect itself far better than many other fish in the ocean but that's not all this fish had up its sleeves gills it also had one of the most powerful bites even more so than the great white number 13 diclopterous did you know that there are more people scared of scorpions in the world than spiders those people will surely be grateful that the jaclopterus no longer exists described as a sea scorpion it could be large as a human hand or as giant as a human ecologist for 98 was a large anthropod living hundreds of millions of years ago basically it was the sea creature of your nightmares the jaclopterus existed around 431 to 418 million years ago which places it in the silurian time period their fossils were first discovered by a fossil collector in 1818 s l mitchell and they were found to have lived widely across the northern hemisphere they had a sick segmented body two large eyes two small eyes and a mouth on the bottom of its head it also had a giant pair of pincers not all too dissimilar to a lobster today's scorpion or a crab they would use these to capture and tear apart their prey they would have breathed through gills in their abdominal area and their tail while scorpion-like didn't seem to contain any venom history tells us that the jaklopterus died off during the permian extinction period which saw the extinction of around 95 to 96 of all marine life number 12 pelicoprion the helicoprion has been one of the unknowns of the ancient marine world for several years but even though we don't know everything about it what we do know is that it's far scarier than any dinosaur ever was helicoprion is like no other shark in the world ever and we can figure that out by its teeth alone many fossils of the helicoprians have been found since the 1800s but the majority have included a buzzsaw-like set of teeth that has left a big question mark over its anatomy where do these teeth sit are they for show or for eating several experts have sketched different theories of where the teeth would have featured on the helicoprion's body even its tail but none seemed entirely plausible what they've now been able to work out though is that the helicoprion was around 25 feet long and had a circular saw-like mouth with teeth that rotated back in its mouth given the abundance of soft-bodied cephalopods of that era around 270 million years ago this dental pattern would have been quite helpful to have getting bitten by a shark would be painful enough but a shark-like fish with a circular saw in its mouth pure torture number 11 the cthulhu there's no doubt in our minds that the cthulhu would have been scarier than the dinosaur but fortunately this animal is fictional the cthulhu is a godlike monster that was invented by h.p lovecraft a 20th century horror writer the terrifying powerful chaotic and destructive creature is one of your nightmares it has cephalopodic and anthropoidic qualities an upper body not dissimilar from man and webbed wings on its back it also has dangerously sharp claws on its arms and legs but let's not forget its head and that's what makes it far more terrifying than dinosaurs the cthulu's head is a large pulsating sack with tentacles sprouting from where you'd typically expect to see a mouth standing it hundreds of feet tall but able to change its body size this creature is a pure nightmare but even if its appearance is enough to make you run away screaming that's not the only reason why it's scarier than your average t-rex the cthulhu has crazy powers that no human would ever be able to combat cthulhu is immortal and can endure a lot of damage it can only be defeated by near-omnipotent force because it has wings it can also fly and it's both intelligent and can communicate with telepathy there's no way our weaponry would be a match for this animal number 10 sarcosuchus crocodiles are terrifying enough but with their giant teeth huge jaws and massive bodies but did you know there used to be something much much larger the sarcas was a relative of the croc that used to grow up to around 31.2 feet long and weighed nearly five short tons this was the largest crocodile ever known to have lived their snout made up around 75 percent of their jaw length with 35 teeth on each side this awful creature lived around 133 to 112 million years ago in africa and south america during the early cretaceous period the first remains of the sarcosuchus were discovered in 1946 and almost an entire skull was found in 1964. still it wasn't until 2000 that scientists began piecing together the whole crocodile based on their teeth and snout scientists believe the sarcas would have fed on large prey like dinosaurs and that they took around 60 years to grow to adult size imagine waiting until your retirement years to reach adulthood it's hard enough coexisting with the crocodiles and alligators we have now imagine living with one as giant as the sarcas number nine mosasaurus the lizards we have today generally dine on small animals and plants the likelihood of being eaten by a lizard is slim to none but there once was a lizard that could have and there's no doubt in our minds that it was scarier than dinosaurs [Applause] we're pleased it went the way of the dinosaurs this lizard was the mosasaurus and its name means muce lizard which refers to the river where it was first found it lived during the late cretaceous time period which was about 70 to 66 million years ago they fed on sharks plesiosaurs other mosasaurs like it large fish and sea birds given that they could reach lengths of up to 56 feet it's likely they could have dined on humans if given a chance from what we see in their fossils they had barrel-shaped bodies large eyes and giant conical teeth they also lived close to the surface of the ocean so that they could prey on birds fish turtles and more the mosasaurus was the last of its kind and for that we're thankful we can't imagine sharing our rivers and beaches with this monster number eight megalodon dozens of people are attacked by sharks often unprovoked every year while only a handful of those attacks are fatal could you imagine how different those statistics would be if the megalodon was still around the megalodon existed around 23 to 3.6 million years ago during the early miocene and pliocene period it was from the extinct family called autodontaday it's related to the great white shark but is the final chrono species of the giant shark family we're so happy to hear that the megalodon was the biggest shark ever to exist in the ocean and was one of the largest fish on record its teeth were about three times as large as those of the great white there's no way to know for sure exactly how big the megalodon was but scientists believed they were around 34 feet but could grow as long as 52 feet if that's true they would have been the largest fish ever given their size everything was a potential snack dolphins small whales turtles seals it would eat them all you'll surely be in agreement that these sharks are scarier than dinosaurs because if they can eat whales they would have surely eaten humans number seven quetzalcoatlus anytime we see an eagle or another large bird flying through the sky we stare up in awe they look majestic and some of us even quickly grab a camera to snap a photo or two but imagine if it weren't just eagles in the sky but dinosaurs quetzalcoatlus was once the largest flying animal to have ever lived it was from the late cretaceous time period and was classed as a pterodactyloid pterosaur try saying that three times fast they were toothless animals with long stiff necks and would have stood with a wingspan of around 33 feet fossils show they may have even been as tall as a giraffe but unlike birds the quetzalcoatlus wasn't exactly graceful it also wouldn't win any beauty pageant awards from what we've managed to work out through fossils they would have had the body of a bat with feathers on it and the neck and head of a stork we're taught from a young age that storks bring babies but do you know what quetzalcoatlus would have brought probably death anything and everything to this animal was a source of food number six the lato arkhan if there's gonna be any animal scarier than the dinosaur it would have to be a prehistoric sea monster called tholato arkhan its name literally translates to the lizard-eating sovereign of the sea which can't mean anything good scientists worked out that this 28-foot long monster lived around 244 million years ago during the triassic period twice as big as most jurassic ocean predators they were one species of a group of reptiles that lived in the ocean alongside dinosaurs but if there's one thing that made the thalato arkhan stand out from the crowd it was its diet based on fossil findings in nevada this creature was capable of eating prey its own size imagine eating someone the same size as you it just doesn't seem possible they survived the mass permian extinction and thrive for around 160 million years after then for some unknown reason they died out they started declining in numbers toward the end of the cretaceous period we'd like to throw our two cents in and say that eating something the same size as you for dinner might have something to do with it that surely can't be good for your health number five hallucigenia in 1977 a man called simon conway morris found an organism so strange that he thought he must be hallucinating such was his confusion at his find that he named it hallucigenia showing just how genuinely odd this creature was and the confusion didn't stop with simon for decades biologists have been studying fossils of the hallucigenia trying to find out whether its head is its tail or the tail is its head fortunately thanks to our brilliant technology in the form of electronic microscopes we have a better idea than ever before of what hallucigenia actually is it is thought that this creature existed about 540 million years ago during the cambrian explosion this time period is when there was a sudden burst of new biodiversity on earth the hallucigenia has two modern descendants which are two varieties of worm and it has throat teeth on its legs which is also alongside its jaw they grew up to around 140 millimeters long 125 millimeters high and had a tube-like body with seven pairs of dorsal spines their ventral lobopod limbs had tiny little claws on the ends and while this tiny critter wouldn't have been able to launch a savage attack on a human its disturbing looks are enough to make us think that they're scarier than dinosaurs number four entaladant there's a reason the entaladant has don't in its name we don't want to see it back here ever again with the jaw of a crocodile cloven hooves and a hefty weight of around two thousand pounds we're not surprised it was called the hell pig we are also not surprised that the genus it comes from theodon means hostile and dreadful the entoulade really was its mouth full of teeth were all the better to eat you with and it's stocky frame with a hump made it robust enough to handle its own against predators they went extinct around 19 million years ago but before then they lived in mongolia europe and north america the fossilized forms of the entaladant are like that of dinosaurs their heads were giant and they had deep sad eyes a long snout and massive teeth their heads took up over a third of the total body mass so we can only imagine how easy it was for them to chomp down on their prey still scientists think that they used to wait for other animals to take down something then they would scare them away and eat it themselves so maybe they weren't so fearsome after all just lazy number three titana boa we've all seen those terrifying videos of snakes coming up through toilet bowls or hanging out in your shoes by the front door those snakes are often small but the blood curdling screams you let out are still very valid but what if that snake coming up through your sewer system or finding a quiet nook in your home was 42.7 feet long the titanoboa an extinct snake from between 66 and 56 million years ago is definitely more terrifying than any dinosaur and this one was a genuine giant this nope rope lived during the paleocene epoch and had an average body length of 42.7 feet note the word average these things were massive they weighed around 1.25 tons and are related to today's anacondas so far scientists have found around 30 fossils from titanoboas and the majority have been adults even the smaller juvenile snakes were huge when you compare them to the average length of a 21.3 foot anaconda there has never been a living snake found that's longer than 31.5 feet which goes to show just how huge these snakes really were scientists think they may have spent a lot of time in the water which would have made it easier for them to get around and source food number 2 gorgonops the gorgonops is a thoraxic that gets its name from the word gorgos which means dreadful we can't think of a more fitting name for this creature than that gorgonops lived about 255 to 250 million years ago around the late permian period they were discovered in the 19th century in africa and were given their name by sir richard owen in 1876. this strange animal weighed as much as a cow and was as long as a great white shark so about 10 feet long and 1 000 pounds to be honest there isn't a lot known about the gorgonops so far because very few fossils have been found to date still they were probably a massive predator with giant teeth that could take down anything and everything that looked potentially snack-like while they weren't as large as dinosaurs they did have a dinosaur-like appearance scientists also think that they may have been warm-blooded with fur but sketches show them without hair even though there are a lot of unknowns we know enough to be thankful that they're not here today number one forest racity ornithophobia is the fear of birds which can be hard enough to deal with based on the current bird species we have but imagine if the forest racity still existed those with the condition would never leave their homes forestry cities were terror birds that lived around 62 to 2 million years ago they were flightless carnivorous birds that would grow up to 10 feet tall imagine scattering bird seed on your lawn only to find a bird nearly twice the height of a human wandering onto your property to eat it they were dominant predators in south america around the canazoic period and lived around the area of texas to florida if their size wasn't a good enough reason for people to freak out they were aggressive and fast scientists even think they could run at speeds of up to 30 miles per hour so their name of terror birds is not exactly far-fetched they also had pneumatic-like beaks that could puncture prey with the force of a sledgehammer there are a lot of scary animals out there but we're pretty sure that the forest racity is definitely near the top of the list okay we're not gonna lie having some giant dinosaurs walking among us would be pretty cool but these animals not so much which one sounded the scariest to you and which one do you think you'd try and have as a pet also check out our other cool stuff showing up on screen right now see you next time

Channel: Factsopedia

Views: 269,059

Rating: 4.685658 out of 5

Keywords: animals, prehistoric animals, dinosaur, jurassic park, scariest animals in the world, scary animal, extinct, biggest sea monsters, sea monsters, deep sea monsters, mysterious creatures, animal, scary animals, scariest animals, animals in the world, in the world, creepy, creepiest, scary, scarier, scariest, giant, biggest, unbelievable, mysterious things, megalodon, scarier than megalodon, sea creature, scary creatures, biggest fish, strange creatures, scary monster

Id: CYkxjBqRkqo

Length: 22min 54sec (1374 seconds)

Published: Sun Oct 04 2020