Himanshi singh May 19, 2020
Dire wolves are not just legends; they were real animals that lived during the late Pleistocene and early Holocene periods. Although dire wolves have a reputation for being much larger than modern wolves, the recovered fossils have varied in size.
Also known as Castoroides, these ancient giant beavers grew larger than 2 meters in length, twice as large as their living relatives. They had massive front teeth and powerful jaws, allowing them to gnaw trees and branches, and large claws, used for digging burrows in the ground.
As the name suggests, the dwarf elephant is one of the smallest elephants to have ever lived. Dwarf elephants were first discovered on the small island of Tilos in Greece. The dwarf elephant provides an example of insular dwarfism, a phenomenon where a species shrinks over time as a method of survival.
Perhaps one of the most well-known on this list, the woolly mammoth is a mammal of the family Elephantidae that lived during the Pleistocene era. Woolly mammoths were well known for their large tusks and wooly coat.
Another well-known animal from ancient history, the saber-tooth cat, is an apex predator that lived across a variety of continents, including North America, South America, Asia, Europe, and Africa.
The glyptodon is an extinct genus of mammals that lived in South America and parts of North America 5 million to 11,000 years ago. Related to the modern armadillo, the bone plating covering their body gave them an armored shell that offered full protection.
The megatherium is an enormous species of sloth. The word megatherium comes from the Greek words "mega" (meaning "great") and "therion" (meaning "beast" or “animal”). These colossal sloths lived primarily in South and Central America as early as 400,000 years ago.
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