Cool Animals That Are Now Extinct

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The islands of New Zealand boast some of the most breathtaking scenery in the world, an opinion cemented by the fact that countless epic movies are choosing to shoot there. However, when man first migrated to New Zealand at approximately the first millennium BCE, they were not the only predators in the area. New Zealand truly was the land of birds, both flightless and flying. Haast’s Eagle was by far the greatest predator on the islands next to the human hunters and is considered to be the largest species of eagle to ever exist at roughly 30 pounds in weight compared to 14 pounds of the largest living eagle. It was so large and so fierce that modern scientists and the ancient folk legends of the native peoples theorize it probably fed on humans in addition to its primary prey of flightless birds called moas (12 feet tall and about 500 pounds). Man knows to expect death from intimidating predators on the ground such as lions and tigers, but death from above was part of everyday life of the early peoples in New Zealand until Haast’s Eagles died out about 1400 CE because its dense forest habitat started being destroyed by farming humans and the humans hunted their primary food source (moas) to its own extinction.

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Megalodon actually breaks down to mean “big tooth” in Greek. The name could not be more spot on though. It was one of the largest and even most powerful predatory fish since the beginning of vertebrate life on Earth. However, megalodon is certainly the largest shark ever and in depth study and observation has lead scientists to think it may be just an impossibly large and stocky great white shark. The largest specimen of megalodon that scientists have been able to find indicate a shark of roughly 67 feet long. Ancient discoveries of this shark’s special triangular teeth made people to believe they were dragons, and since the size of these teeth were approximately seven inches, no one can blame them for thinking these fossils came from a dragon. In addition to its size though, megalodon also had a heavily calcified skeleton which was rare for vertebrates of its time. What this fact means is that megalodon was as strong as he was big. He was the biological equivalent of a tank—an aquatic killing machine. In 1909 a full jaw of megalodon was discovered and used to as one of the first attempts to estimate the shark’s size based on the jaw alone. The lack of knowledge of statistically linking ratios of a shark’s teeth and jaws to its total body length made this first guess in size very off (98 feet as opposed to the now accepted 67 feet), but the fact that a fully grown man could easily sit in the jaw of megalodon does not take away from the awe involved with a shark of this size even though the original estimate was too large.

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Most humans have a natural aversion to bugs, and it is easy to have this dislike as all insects are creepy looking. To extend on this idea, independent horror films and even some mainstream ones have capitalized on the creepy factor of bugs to create movies about huge bugs that search out humans to terrorize them. The problem is that giant bugs used to be a reality. The arthropleura was a super long relative of millipedes and centipedes that lived in Scotland and parts of northeastern North America. It is the largest known land invertebrate in the history of Earth at 8-8.5 feet long! Scientists have been able to piece together that the smaller arthopleuras were most likely herbivores while the larger ones were omnivores—yes, an INSECT that ate small animals! Fossilized footprints of these creatures show that they actually moved pretty fast too, using their up to 30 pairs of legs to quickly swerving around obstacles on their forest floor environments.

Author: Brooke Windsor — Copyrighted © roadtickle.com