Prehistoric Giants

Prehistoric Giants book cover — Contents The Big the Bad and the Ugly Head-butting Beast Moschops Horned Horror Estemmenosuchus Big Beast in the Big Apple Paraceratherium Titanic Turtle Stupendemys Monkey Business Gigantopithecus Runaway Rhino Elasmotherium Magnificent Marsupial Diprotodon Giant Sloth Megatherium Towering Camel Titanotylopus King of the Grasslands Mammoth Timeline Uncovering the Past Index 6 8 10 12 14 16 18 20 22 24 26 28 30 32

Prehistoric Giants — page 1 — The Big the Bad and the ugly We all know dinosaurs reached ginormous proportions But they weren’t the only colossal creatures to roam the world before humans Read on to discover some of the biggest baddest and ugliest animals ever to inhabit the planet O p a binia So how did these creatures evolve Well all life started in the sea and around 545 million years ago many different animals began to appear Some of them were truly weird Take Opabinia left It had ﬁ ve mushroom-shaped eyes ﬁ fteen body segments and a grasping claw at the end of a long nose or proboscis to give it its scientiﬁ c name It used the proboscis to feed itself like the elephant uses its trunk Out of the water things got just as bizarre About 300 million years ago huge dragonﬂ ies took to the air They had wingspans stretching to 26 inches 65 centimeters the same size as some of today’s birds of prey And massive millipedes up to 7 feet 6 inches 2 3 meters long marched across the land It sounds like science ﬁ ction but these creatures really existed The ﬁ rst dinosaurs evolved about 230 240 million years ago but they didn’t rule the world right away Most like Compsognathus left were only the size of turkeys But they were fast and they preyed on tiny reptiles and mammals that scampered around the forests Over about 40 million years dinosaurs became massive for various reasons including an incredible abundance of food Compsognathus with prey 6

Prehistoric Giants — page 2 — Mammals started evolving at the same time as dinosaurs For about 160 million years however most mammals were shrew-sized any larger and they would have been gobbled up by hungry carnivorous dinosaurs After the dinosaurs died out mammals such as the giant sloth Megatherium below grew to enormous proportions You might think today’s gorillas elephants camels and rhinos are big but they would all be dwarfed by their prehistoric ancestors And even those creatures looked small compared to the biggest land mammal of all time Paraceratherium left What if these animals came back to life and and lived in the modern world Read on to witness what an invasion from a prehistoric world would be like Paraceratherium and get ready for some bizarre and scary encounters between modern creatures and prehistoric beasts e ri u m ath g Me 7

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