Largest Animals to Ever Exist on Earth

tell me something what's the biggest animal you've ever seen in real life an elephant maybe a giraffe perhaps you've actually seen a blue whale they're all pretty huge but amazingly these aren't the biggest animals to have ever existed in fact they're not even the biggest animal of their kind so come with me as we take a look at the biggest animals that have ever walked the Earth and what they were able to do Arthur plura for most people the sight of a milipede crawling along the floor is enough to send chills down their spine and if you're one of those people you better thank God you weren't around 300 million years ago back then during the Carboniferous period a critter known as arthr plura lived on our planet this enormous creature goes down as the largest ever terrestrial arthropod how large well based on fossils found in North umberland England it's assumed these animals could grow to about 8. 2 ft long that's over 2T longer than your average human want to know something that makes them worse when threatened it's been suggested that these big bugs could lift up their upper body like a cobra however paleontologists haven't been able to confirm this from fossil findings alone even so can you imagine this thing rearing up and Tower Hing over you on top of that the aurus fossils indicate that it had a body mass of some 110 lb that makes it about the same weight as an average 14-year-old human child oh my God burn it with fire for reference the largest terrestrial arthropod alive today is the coconut crab while these guys look horrifyingly huge in their own right they're just 40% as long and less than 10% as heavy as the ARR plura the question is what caused these massive millipedes to get so big well during the Carboniferous period oxygen levels in the atmosphere were greater than 30% around 10% higher than the levels today thanks to the elevated oxygen arthropods which take on oxygen far less efficiently than mammals were able to bulk up more than they'd be able to nowadays I think I speak for all of us when I say thank God for the droing oxygen a pission Hayden ey well are there pods aren't exactly cute the same can't be said for dogs they're man's best friend no matter what shape or size they are although I'm not sure this one counts you're looking at the Aion Hayden ey a prehistoric canine that lived during the late myene period between 12 and 6 million years ago these guys go down as the largest canines ever to exist they were about the size of a grizzly bear standing a horrifying 3 to 4T at the shoulder and up to8 8 ft long this was the largest canid ever known Aion hay and I were also pretty bulky usually weighing in around 250 lb which is around the equivalent weight of 70 Chihuahuas one specimen on the bulkier side even exceeded that with the humorous of one fossil specimen indicating it must have been at least 370 lb incredibly that also puts it at the weight of a small grizzly bear but size wasn't the only thing these chunky canines shared with bears they belong to the Boro funin subf family of canines which translates to Bone crushing dogs yikes unsurprisingly epion hay and I were equipped with extremely powerful jaws robust MERS and incisive canines to take down pretty much anything that crossed its path fossils of their giant teeth and mandibles which are some 6 Ines long reveal they were specialized to a hyper carnivorous bone crushing diet like hyenas which curiously you're not canids man if these guys were still kicking about they'd make the best guard dogs ever saying that I'm not sure how comfortable I'd be with a bear-sized doggo in my house more comfortable than having 70 Chihuahuas I reckon what would you prefer beard dog or 70 rats I mean sorry Chihuahuas for Beard dog hit that like button and for many chihuahuas hit subscribe I'll done sweet what mass of animals have we got next l elephant bird much like kin's birds also come in all shapes and sizes from teeny tiny 2 and 1/4 in bee hummingbirds to gigantic ostriches that stretch up to 9 ft tall and weigh in at up to some 300 lb but while ostriches May top the scale for largest living bird they're no match for one type of extinct feathered foul known aptly as elephant Birds these flightless Giants strutted around the islands of Madagascar until they died out around 1 thousand years ago and they weren't just big for perspective this is one of their eggs these are the largest bird eggs ever found each one was in excess of 12 in long and weighed up to a back breaking 22 lb with a volume of 150 times greater than a chicken's egg in modern times ostriches lay the largest eggs of any bird yet they're only a seventh of the weight and half the height of the eggs of an elephant bird but enough egg top how big were the birds themselves well DNA from skeletal remains indicate that these flightless Giants stood 10 ft tall making them roughly a foot taller than the average ostrich okay that's a little bigger I guess but with the largest bird of the species aporus Maximus clocking in at an ungodly 1100 lb Mass they were four times heavier than ostriches all that's left for me to say is that they are some exceptionally enormous Birds parapuzosia sepen R densis for our next colossal Critter we've got to take a dive down into the depths of the ocean it's here where you'll find seapods the group that includes Marine mollis like the squid octopus and cuttlefish the title of the longest seapod alive today goes to the giant squid I mean the clues in the name in some cases they grow to over 42 ft granted most of this length is in its tentacles with the body span being closer to 8 ft length isn't the only sizable things about these squid though they've also got the largest eyes in the Animal Kingdom at up to 10 in in diameter their peepers are about the same size as a human's head measuring in 33 ft long colossal squid are ironically slightly shorter than their giant cousins despite that their chunkier body makes them the heaviest living spilop pod weighing in at a a hefty 1100 lb close to double the weight of a large giant squid surprising as it may seem neither the Colossal or giant squid are the world's biggest seapod though instead that Accolade goes to parapuzosia sepen denus easy for me to say these ammonites or shelled seapods lived way back during the late Cretaceous Period between 166 million years ago the largest fossil shell of this astonish ing ammonite was close to 6 ft in diameter however this was an incomplete specimen with estimates that a whole shell had 11 ft wide diameter meaning based just on their shells alone these chunky seapods would dwarf us humans even more impressively the parapuzosia sepen Denis shells alone may have weighed over 1,500 lb that's almost a third more than the colossal squid and that's just this thing shell the total weight of these beasts may have exceeded 3200 lb or 1. 6 tons but how come they got so big well one study assessed historical ammonite finds and argued that pressures from predators at the time forced these ammonites to evolve to be bigger and therefore harder to hunt though their findings were inconclusive well I think it's a miracle these Giants didn't just sink to the sea floor gigantopithecus black eye Eastern Lan gorillas are the largest and most imposing living primates in the world full-grown males stand 5 1/2 ft upright while their massive muscular bodies weigh as much as 485 lbs intimidating as these gorillas look there once existed a primate that would have made even them nervous only tooth and Jawbone remains of the gigantopithecus black eye have been discovered to date but they're so large that paleontologists estimate that this prodigious primate would have towered up up to 10 ft tall and weighed a staggering 12200 lb sadly though the gigantopithecus black eyes formidable frame is what led to its downfall while it was likely a herbivore due to its size it would have depended on a large amount of food like fruits leaves and forest plants however around 100,000 years ago global warming meant more and more forested area turned into savan Landscapes depleting the gigantopithecus black eyes food sources phew good I mean oh no so tragic poor absolutely terrifying giant primate thing Titan oore studies into phobias have Loosely established that around half of all adults feel anxious about snakes with 2 to 3% of them meeting the criteria of a snake phobia and to be fair who can blame them when there are serpents like the 30t long and 550 lb green anaconda out there however thingss could be a whole lot worse for those that get the snake shakes you see back around 60 million years ago During the paleocene period the world was home to the biggest species of snake ever discovered the titano boa from the name I bet you're thinking of a snake that can rear itself up above the tree line or that could take up the width of an entire Road and you're not far off based on fossils of a gigantic vertebrae discovered in Colombia which you can see compared to a regular Anaconda vertebrae archaeologists believe these sizable serpents could grow to a hair raising 42 ft over 7 times the length of an average human and if it reared up just half of its body it would Tower over you at the height of a two-story building thy tanoa are also estimated to have weighed up to 2540 lb which is as heavy as a small car and almost five times as heavy as a green anaconda the good news they weren't venomous the bad news they were constrictors that's right these 42t long beasts got their Meals by cooling around crushing and Es fixating whatever prey they could get their bodies on jeez thank God these aren't still kicking around I mean could you imagine if one of these snakes SL through a town they'd have to call the armyan yep these guys have serpent cemented their place as one of the world's largest animals Arc ethereum Angus to end from behind glass or on a screen polar bears look pretty cute up close though it's a more terrifying story these Arctic based animals can weigh more than 1300 LB stand as tall as 5 ft at the shoulder and reach 10 ft in length making them not only the largest bear but the largest living land carnivore too yet they aren't the biggest bears to ever walk the planet they're not even close going back 700,000 years the arum madans was endemic to South America and takes the title for biggest bear ever take a look at this humorous specimen which is the top bone of the front appendage here we have the humorous of a spectacled bear they're about 160 lb now this belongs to an American black bear some 460 lb and this gargantuan humorous is from arum and gustad which paleontologists have concluded means the bear was somewhere between 270 lb and 4500 lb even at the smallest that's still about a third more than the biggest polar bear when they stood on their hind legs their fossilized remains suggest they would have reached a neck breaking height of 14 ft even the paws of arum and gusted ends were huge at a length of 15 in they're more than double the size of a human hand unfortunately for these big bears their stupendous size also led to their downfall it's theorized smaller and faster Predators outnumbered and excelled against them limiting their food source until they eventually died out 700,000 years ago thank God I couldn't bear to think how intimidating it'd be to come across one of these literal Giants Saros sucus imperator in Niger West Africa there was once a species of crocodilian that didn't just rule the food chain here it dominated it now modern a saltwater crocodiles like this one ain't nothing to mess with they can reach some 23 ft in length and weigh up to 2,650 lb the largest and heaviest living reptiles in the world although that's nothing compared to what was once known as the Saros sucus imperator which lived during the early Cretaceous Period around 112 million years ago based on skull and vertebrae fossils paleontologists estimate these Crocs grew up to 40 ft in length while in terms of weight they're likely to have packed on close to 9 tons that makes this super croc twice the length and nearly eight times as heavy as L long the 18t long and 2370 lb Beast that was the largest crocodile ever held in captivity if that wasn't fearsome enough these abnormal amphibians had super long snouts too filled with no less than 132 conical teeth which were up to 6 in Long thanks to their bulky build and the fact that its teeth didn't interlock indicates to paleontologist that the Saros sucus imperador had the ability to Ambush and Prey Upon anything that entered the water whether it was a giant fish or even dinosaurs super croc yeah super scary Croc Bol loxodon patticus it probably won't come as a surprise that the largest living land animal is the elephant to be specific the African elephant with Bulls reaching a shoulder height of 13 ft and a whopping weight of 12 tons but somewhere between 2 and5 mil 11,700 years ago during the PTO scene period it turns out there was an even more enormous elephant on the scene based on the discovery of a partial femur estimated to be some 6' 2 in long paleontologists have estimated that an ancient elephant known as paleo loxodon patticus was an imposing 17 ft tall at the shoulder meaning they Tower over any modern-day elephant that also make them taller than a T-Rex and human combined on top of that these bulky beasts weigh in at a whopping 24 tons making them well over twice as heavy as an African elephant I mean one look at the skull of these guys tells you just how gigantic they really were and at a staggering 12 ft long their straight tusks were twice the length of an average African elephant tusk in fact one Tusk alone is estimated to have had a mass of 260 lb meaning it's more than 60 lb heavier than the average American adult human all that crowns these ancient elephants as the largest land mammals to ever walk the earth man that's going to be hard to forget lead sick th back in 1886 on a farm in Peterboro England paleontologists discovered what they thought were the back plates of a Stegosaurus except the more they uncovered the more unsure they became of what this creature actually was turns out it wasn't a stegosaurs or even a dinosaur but the impossibly gigantic bones of the lead sick fish crazy as that sounds it was an easy mistake to make out of all bony fish which are fish that have skeletons made up of bone tissue unlike the cartilage most have the lead 6 this is the largest it's been claimed this freaky fish that swam out of the the world sees 165 million years ago stretched back in astonishing 55 ft making this freakish fish larger than a school bus and close to 10 times the size of the average human heck these things would make submarines look like rubber duckies who knew fish could be so scary thanks to their gigantic size lead sick these would also set back the scales weighing in at around 50 tons today the largest living bony fish is the formidable floating blob known as the ocean sunfish as you can see these things far exceed humans when it comes to size yet ocean sunfish are only around 20% as long as the lead 6es and even at some 5,000 lb are less than a 20th of their weight honestly I'm kind of glad these don't exist anymore I'd never go in the ocean again if they did Megalodon we're actually staying underwater for now because this next colossal Critter is so sizable it have made even the lead sick these nervous this is the wait no I just can't say it like he does Jason STM take it away it's Megalodon yes while the Meg was a fictitious action film about a gigantic shark the Megalodon itself was a real shark in fact it was the largest shark to have ever existed and one of the largest fish in the world which terrorized the oceans during the meos and pliocene period approximately 20 to 3.

6 million years ago now exactly how big it could grow is up to debate with all estimates based on tooth size the largest verified specimen of which is a colossal 7. 48 in long but why teeth because sharks don't have bones their skeletons are made of cartilage which doesn't fossilize well smaller estimates from the Natural History Museum put it at just 50 ft whereas some researchers claim it could reach lengths as big as 82 ft at the largest estimate even the average whale shark the largest living cartilagenous fish is no match for om mag reaching just half their length unfortunately for anything that shared the ocean with these tears the Megalodon's massive malls held some 276 of these 7-in razor sharp teeth giving it an estimated maximum bite force of some 182,000 Newtons for contrast to humans maximum bite force is around 1,317 anyone else suddenly feeling a little more grateful for GR whites titanosaurs dinosaurs are known as the largest group of land animals that have ever walked the Earth but the herbivorous sorod subgroup was the biggest of them all in fact the biggest sorop pods were dub titanosaurs which has to be the coolest name ever with immensely long necks and thick squat limbs they were well adapted to carry their huge frames and an obscene amount of weight but how much it exactly well back in 1987 the biggest ever found was the Argentinosaurus a Dino from some 90 million years ago in the late Cretaceous Period very few bone fragments remained and from these limited specimens paleontologist estimated the size of this thing was some 115 to 120 ft long and that it could have weighed in at an ungodly 77 tons roughly the same as 12 African elephants though this estimation was very rough this was a huge Discovery literally but then in 2014 something even bigger was found the remains of the patago Titan a giant from 101 million years ago during the early Cretaceous Period this big BEAST's femur was over 8 ft long that is just the top of the leg bone and it's taller than an average human from this paleontologist estimated it could have measured an at a gargantuan 123 ft long weighing and at 63 tons that's as long as 20 people laid down end to end and heavier than nine African elephants holy cow or I guess elephant in this case so the biggest was the patago Titan but the heaviest is the Argentinosaurus I mean for now who knows we might dig up something even bigger in the next few years whopping whales there aren't many animals out there that can Trump the tanur for size sperm whales which can make ships look teeny tiny do come close measuring up to 60 ft long enabl a way more than 80 tons but that's still not bigger than the Titanosaurus but the same can't be said for another modern-day ocean dweller however any guesses yep I'm talking about the blue whale widely seen as the largest animal ever to exist on Earth surprisingly though in terms of length they come up short on both titanosaurs with individual measuring from 80 to 100 ft long okay so they may not have the length but the biggest blue whale ever found clucked in at 210 tons which is almost triple the heavier Argentinosaurus but amazingly there once existed another whale that may have been even larger back in the eosine period around 39 million years ago peritus inhabited the world's oceans with a length between 55 and 65 ft it was very large but was stunted compared to the blue whale despite that paleontologists estimated this Beast weighed up to 370 tons for context if this ancient whale did weigh 370 tons it'd be more than three times as heavy as a blue whale imagine the fear of having one of these balloon behemoths swimming under your ship but why do researchers think it was so big well when the fossilized vertebrae of this Beast were discovered they weighed in at over 220 lb each it's believed that in spite of the paras's shorter length their skeleton would have weighed twice that of a blue whales with a mass between 5. 8 and 8.