I am fairly certain that no land mammal predator got anywhere near “T. Rex” size; what was the biggest carnivore that ever existed?
The polar bear was and is the largest mammalian land carnivore ever.
My Guess would be the Saber-Tooth Tiger, but I’m probably wrong.
The extinct Andrewsarchus currently holds the crown for “biggest mammalian carnivore ever”.
A killer whale is considerably larger than a polar bear and is definitely a carnivore. A Kodiak Brown bear is also larger than a polar bear.
I seem to recall reading about huge carnivores that existed in ancient times, but can’t cite a source, so will just shut up about it.
When will I learn to &%$*% preview!
Uh, maybe not, Q.E.D. Andrewsarchus is estimated to have been 15-16 feet long and may have weighed as much as a polar bear, or more.
Man I hate to eat crow…the feathers, you know. The Kodiak is the largest brown bear. The polar is the largest bear period.
The sperm whale is the biggest mammalian carnivore… ever.
We’re talking about land carnivores. Whales are out. And kodiak bears are NOT larger than polar bears. Cite.
It’s not really very scientific to declare a largest critter based only on a skull, now is it? Show me a reasonably complete skeleton, and I’ll listen.
Nope. If you are including aquatic animals, then the Blue Whale is the largest carnivore ever - using carnivore in the broadest sense of an animal that eats other animals. Blue whales subsist in a large part on krill and other small animals.
Oh come on Colibri, the Sperm Whale is down there hundreds of fathoms below the surface in the freezing, murky depths where pressures are so great they would crush you like … well something very crushable… going flipper to tentacle, one on one with the deadly Colossal Squid trying not to get it’s dinner plate sized eyes pecked out by that giant parrot like beak, and you compare this valiant warrior of the deep with the biological equivalent of a gaint cleaner catfish scooping up the piscatorial eqivalent of ocean lice. Way? No way! For shame!
Killer whales (sometimes) hunt on land, do they count?
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Q.E.D., finding a web site that says that “polar bears are the largest carnivores on land” does not make it so.
By the information in your own cite, polar bears (up to about 1,000 pounds) are substantially smaller than Kodiak Bears, which weigh up to 1,500 pounds.
I suspect what that web site is implying is that Polar Bears are the largest nearly pure carnivores, since they eat almost exclusively meat, while Kodiaks are much more omnivorous.
It’s quite reasonable to believe Andrewsarchus was the largest carnivore ever, since the skull is twice the length of the largest bear known. (Note that the linked-to site seems to have the length wrong. It gives a length of only 83 cm, when the actual length is nearly a meter. I’ve seen the skull at the American Museum of Natural History, and it’s quite amazing). If Andrewsarchus wasn’t a lot bigger than a bear, it would have been falling forward onto its schnozzola constantly.
Whaddya, trying to take all the fun out of nit-picking?
The site said “The skull is characteristic of its closest relatives, the mesonychids”, so even though we don’t have a complete skeleton, we can estimate it’s probable size by comparison.
Is this this humongous predator that was featured on “Walking with Prehistoric Mammals”?
OK for a spanner in the works, do Steller Sea Lions count as both land and sea mammals? They can be quite happy on the land (unlike whales), eat fish, and average male weight of 1500 Ibs.
No, not really. I found even more sites stating that the Kodiak Bear is the largest bear, and the largest land carnivore. However, neither any of the sites you cite, nor the ones I located, appear to be really authoritative sources on the subject. As is often the case, solid information on the subject doesn’t seem to be available on the internet.
I’ll see if I can find something in the literature.
Now now QED there are many sites on the web for both the Polar Bear and the Kodiak bear as largest; Especially since largeness can be a measured by weight or length. Is there good proof for the oft sited 2200# Polar Bear measurement?
I allways was told/heard that Polar Bears were largest, but then again I had not heard of Kodiak bears since today.