If so, when, and what was the animal in question?
I mean, of course, the largest living carnivore or herbivore in a given epoch. I’m sure there were, for instance, meat-eating dinosaurs that were much larger than any elelphant, but they didn’t live at the same time.
The current winner, the Blue Whale, isn’t a herbivore. There has never been a larger animal.
The current largest living animal, the blue whale, is a carnivore, feeding mainly on krill. (cite)
Good point!
I was coming back to specify that I meant land carnivore versus land herbivore.
The Blue Whale is the largest animal currently alive, or ever known to have lived.
It is a carnivore. It lives on a diet of krill (tiny shrimp.) The animals it eats may be tiny, but they still count as living creatures.
Damn, beaten to it.
You can still prove you are smarter than the average bear by finding a land carnivore that was larger than any herbivore with which it was contemporary. I believe in you! 
Well, wikipedia says some sauropods were bigger, but none more massive than the blue whale. Hey, fun fact of the day, the tallest primate is … humans. Huh. Cool.
Thing is, I never think about largest land carnivore, or heaviest dinosaur, because the blue whale always wins. It’s always going to be biggest. No predators. No need to support it’s own weight. It’s food just floats into it’s mouth. What animal can compete with that lifestyle. Except humans.
Yog-Sosoth was/is larger than any land herbivore. Judging by his/her large pointy teeth, all incarnations of Godzilla are carnivores.
This is what I get for de-mobbing the flying monkeys.
You realize I meant animals that existed at roughly the time, no? And of course I earlier conceded that it was necessary to specify land, so as to leave out Big Blue.
Yog Sosoth is a contemporary Doper. Yog Sothoth was a Lovecraftian Great Old One, presumably with either a palatal deformity or an avid speaker of Castellaño.
Yep, they must sit around and curse our opposable thumbs.
During the early Permian period, invertebrates may have been the largest land animals, and carnivorous. At some time in the Triassic period large crocodilians may have been the largest land animal and carnivorous. Immediatly following the K-T extinction, it’s not clear what animals survived, and the largest land animal could have been a carnivore.
Those cases are speculative. Various theories suggest reasons why vegetarian prey animals tend to be larger than contemporary predators, but nothing that makes it a hard and fast rule.
Do you have a cite for this? None of the documentaries I’ve seen show Godzilla actually eating anything.
This is the sort of nit-picky shit that ruins General Questions. Of course none of the documentaries have shown Godzilla eating, that was why I had to infer from his/her/its teeth that Godzilla is a carnivore. Pay attention!!!
Well, you are the one that specified land animals. That kinda leaves you screwed on summoning your flying monkeys or radioactive bees, now doesn’t it?
We all saw you move the goal post because the answer to the OP was so obvious that any fifth grader would be able to get it. The question was answered in one.
I was speaking of the contemporary Doper. The Great Old Ones are purely fictional.
This one is really borderline but intriguing. Late Triassic Period. Dinosaurs have replaced theropods for the most part. Biggest landliving animals are the herbivorous Prosauropods (a misnomer since they weren’t ancestral to the big sauropods of the Jurassic and Early Cretaceous, but instead an earlier related radiation from a common ancestor). However, in the seas lives a giant primitive Ichthyosaur that is, like orcas on ice floes, able to hurl itself on land to prey on land animals near the shoreline (how they know this is that fossil specimens have been found with small land-living dinosaurs in their abdominal areas). It was significantly larger than even the plateosaurs and melanorosaurs that were the largest contemporary dinosaurs. Definitely not land-living, but predatory on land animals? You bet.
She eats lots of people in the Matthew Broderick flick.
I have specifically said on several recent occasions that I have neither flying monkeys nor radioactive bees. Please update your records.
What goal posts? I’m not issuing a challenge; I’m ASKING a QUESTION. I couldn’t think of a land carnivore that was larger than the larger contemporaneous land herbivore, but I was wondering if anyone else might know of one.
I agree with both qualifications in your first sentence. Thanks!
Anybody got a less borderline example?
I’m pretty sure there never was and never will be a land carnivore larger than a larger herbivore, on land or sea, contemporaneous or not.