Creatures Main Page | Dinosaurs | Trilobites | Search The Web!

Prehistoric Mammals

During the Mesozoic Era, the age of the dinosaurs, mammals were nothing more than little rats who got stepped on by the larger reptiles. However, at the end of the Cretaceous, for some reason, all the great dinosaurs suddenly became extinct. The mammals, however, survived. This was the beginning of a new era for the planet Earth. The Cenozoic Era, or The Age Of Mammals. In the years that would follow, the Earth would become home to some of the largest and most terrifying mammals that ever existed. Birds that ate horses, and ferocious sabre-toothed cats are just some of the awesome animals that are mentioned in this section.

Dinosaurs and mammals evolved within 10 million years of each other, but the mammals had never really had a chance to shine until now. The Earth's climate and geography was changing in their favour. The following are some of the most colossal mammals that have ever existed.

Sabre-Toothed Cats Even though most people refer to this famous group of mammals as "sabre-toothed tigers", they are really called sabre-toothed cats, as the only reason why they were related to tigers was that they were also related to cats. The largest of these was the Smilodon. It was 4-5 feet long, 3 feet high, and weighed about 440 pounds. It was smaller that a modern lion, but heavier. It was not a very fast runner due to it's short legs, but it was adapted to springing onto it's prey. What this cat is famous for are it's two huge canine teeth, up to 17 inches long. As you could probably guess, it's jaws were very powerful and it had huge neck muscles for stabbing prey with it's teeth. What's more, it could open it's jaw to a 120° angle. The Smilodon lived from about 1.6 million years ago to about 11,000 years ago. It lived during the cold Ice Age, probably in grasslands, shrubby areas, and pine forests. Thousands of Smilodon fossils have been found in tar pits. They probably got trapped when trying to attack prey that was already trapped in the tar pits. There were two kinds of sabre-toothed cats, scimitar-toothed and dirk-toothed. Smilodon was dirk-toothed. Some other examples of sabre-toothed cats include Homotherium, Dinictis, and Machairodus.

Megatherium The Megatherium is commonly referred to as the Giant Ground Sloth. It was the ancestor of modern sloths, and could get as big as an elephant! They looked a lot like regular sloths, with large claws for eating plants, just a lot larger. They were able to stand up on their hind legs to get good leaves and twigs from treetops. They lived in North America and South America.

Wooly Mammoths Another one of the best known prehistoric mammals was the wool mammoth. It lived during the ice ages, which could last up to 200,000 years each. It was protected from the cold, however, by its thick, wooly coat. Most of our information on mammoths does not come from fossils, though, but from perfectly preserved specimens found frozen in ice. By looking at the contents of its stomach, we know that it fed on vegetaion. Wooly mammoths looked a little bit like an elephant, just with a thick coat of brown fur, and giant tusks. mammoths have been found in Asia, America, and Europe, and lived from the Pleistocene to about 10,000 years ago. The mammoths probably died out because of climate changes, when the ice age ended.

Indricotheres Indricotheres were the largest land mammals ever to live, and they lived during the Oligocene. A human being would come up to about their knees. The biggest of them weighed about 15 tonnes, and were 4.5 metres tall. The females were slightly smaller than the males. They had very large nasal passages meaning they had a very good sense of smell. They were related to the Rhinoceros, but browsed the tops of trees like a giraffe. They ate plants.

Wooly Rhinos The wooly rhino was about 3.5 metres long, covered with thick, shaggy fur, and had two horns. Its larger horn could get up to 1 metre long. It was a plant eater that spent most of its time grazing for grass on the tundra. Wooly rhinos, like the mammoths, have also been found frozen in ice. Wooly rhinos are shown in the cave paintings of early cave people, which meant they hunted them. Also like the mammoth, the wooly rhino became extinct because of the changing climate, about 20,000 years ago.

DHTML Menu / JavaScript Menu Powered By OpenCube