bored, sitting on the couch, cant do anything cause of healing from back surgery......have a stack of mammal evolution books im working my way through....some cool critters....

Mammut borsoni, from Europe about 3 million years ago, tusks over 14 and a half feet


Pelorvis antiquus, actually lived in northern Africa as recently as 4,000 years ago


entelodont, hell pig......was found over Europe, Asia and North America from around 35mya to 16mya.....various species, some were over 6 foot tall at the shoulder.....nasty buggers, what you would figure a 6 foot tall wild pig would be like




Andrewsarchus mongoliensis, largest meating mammal ever to live which was from about 45mya to 30mya.....3 foot skull....interesting point? it was a hoofed mammal, the thing is more closely related to sheep than it is any living predator....


Libralces gallicus, from around 2.5mya in Europe.....antlers well over 6 and a half feet wide
[img]http://www.mauricioanton.com/dibujos/images/15-Libralces.jpg[/img]

Man, a .45-70 would have been tall-cotton, back then....

elasmotherium, 9 foot at the shoulder, 20 feet long, lived in central Asia till about 1.6mya

Pantera leo atrox American Lion:



11.5' long; 1000 pounds.

Smilodon fatalis Sabre Toothed Cat



4-5 feet long with a one-foot long skull, 2 huge canine teeth and a very strong jaw and neck muscles that ate prehistoric horses, and possibly mastodons and bison.

Probably kinda tough and chewy but a hellofalot more fun to hunt than the dinks we have now

latest studies show the American lion was really a type jaguar, much more heavily built than lions of similar size.....


Stegotetrabelodon.......two sets of tusks....

Arctodus simus - Giant Short Faced Bear



5 feet at the shoulder; 9-11 feet standing; 1600-1800 pounds; strongest jaws of any mammal in history

Megalania prisca - giant "ripper" roamer lizard



Up to 21 feet long, and 4,000 pounds (average around 8 feet and 700-800 pounds)

those [bleep] were still around when the Aborigines hit Australia.....

Platybelodon, shovel tusked elephant from 25mya.....lived in swampy areas and was roughly 9 foot at the shoulder

Yep.

That gives you a warm-fuzzy, knowing you've got a rock and a sharp stick, and it's got all the standard attributes and saliva so hideously putrid that one scratch will kill you from infection (NASTY way to go) in 48 hours.

figure some of those bastards might be the origins of eastern dragon myths? isolated populations could have easily made it into oral histories of locals i would think......several thousand years of retelling and i can see those things turning in into a Japanese dragon.....

When I was a kid I remember seeing photos of Monte Carlo Bighorn Sheep, where the rams had horns that spiraled outward two or three revolutions, winding up being 3-4 feet across. At the time I read they were very rare, mostly found in Afghanistan. Hopefully someday it will be safe to hunt them again...

http://www.wildsheep.org/sheep/international/marco_polo_argali.htm

Just glad a bunch of those ain't around any more.

to true Terry.....surprising how close some came to the present....some were dieing out just as the first real civilizations were being built in Mesopotamia.....on a timeline we missed some by less than the width of a hair.....

The Komodo Dragon springs to mind...

Did cavemen ever sit around and debate the best spear or rock for hunting? Did older cavemen say they used to use a nice light spear or medium sized rock, while the younger cavemen said they just bounced off them now?

use enough rock...