I know that the big sauropod dinosaurs were the biggest land animals ever.
(The blue whale exceeds the mass of the largest dinosaur, but it doesn’t have to support its weight, of course…)
My question is, what was the biggest animal from the time before the dinosaurs?
Both terrestrial and aquatic creatures can be included.
Thanks in advance for any information that you can provide.
My first thoughts were Eurypterids (Sea Scorpions) in the water – they got to be 2 meters in length
And Eryops, an amphibian, on land. They grew to 1.5-2 meters
Moschops a therapsid (sorta proto-mammals) grew to be over 5 meters, and were the largest things in the Permian (the geologic period just before the Mesozoic era, the Age of the Dinosaurs):
These are the biggest I can think of, off the top of my head. I wouldn’t be surprised if something bigger was around, though.
I believe just before the dinosaurs certain synapsids (a clade that later gave rise to the mammals) were the dominant large land animals.
Nifty! Thanks. I love prehistoric animals. When I was much younger, I would read dinosaur books all the time. There have been a whole lot more discoveries in the ensuing years, though, and it is hard to keep up. Plus, my memory is not always so good…
Well, these are all from my memories of prehistoric animal books (and museum visits) from my youth, some 50 years ago*, so there may have been new discoveries that I haven’t heard of. But Wikipedia says Moschops still hols the Permian record.
*depressing (to me) but true.
I would suggest prionsuchus, a 30-foot long amphibian that was an ambush predator. It’s the largest amphibian known to science and pretty cool. It lived in the Triassic.
Whoops, excuse me, i meant the Permian Era.
What about a Dimetrodon?
I hear tell they are not dinosaurs. Why is that, simply because they were pre-Triassic? They look like dinosaurs to me, and they were in my 80s plastic dinosaur sets (same size as plastic army men).
Well, sorta. There’s the strict definition, and the common definition. For the ‘true’ dinosaurs,they can be defined as the last common ancestor of birds (Saurischia) and Triceratops (Ornithischia) and all the descendants of that ancestor. With that definition, the pterosaurs and several species of archosaurs narrowly miss out on being classified as dinosaurs. So our distant sailback cousin is just a little too far back.
The common (non-scientific) definition includes any large prehistoric reptiles.
Another candidate: Dunkleosteus. Late Devonian, up to 10 meters, and 4 short tons, according to the article. A relative of Dinichthys, which was also giant but little is known about it.
Contemporary with the earliest dinosaurs (Upper Triassic) was Shonisaurus, an ichthyosaur. A Wikipedia table of ichthyosaur genera says this in its notes:
Wow! Very impressive.
I would think crocodiles that came before the dinos easily exceeded 25 feet in length, maybe a lot more.
Not disputing the coolness of Shonisaurus, but it wouldn’t be disqualified because it was in the Triassic? I thought the OP wanted creatures from before the time of dinosaurs.
Giant Millipede.
[QUOTE=Wikipedia]
In the Upper Carboniferous (340 to 280 million years ago), Arthropleura became the largest known land invertebrate of all time, reaching lengths of up to 2.6 metres (8 ft 6 in).
…
Arthropleura became extinct at the start of the Permian period, when the moist climate began drying out, destroying the rainforests of the Carboniferous, and allowing the desertification characteristic of the Permian. Because of this, oxygen levels in the atmosphere began to decline to more modest levels. None of the giant arthropods (except for the giant dragonflies such as Meganeuropsis, which continued thriving throughout the Permian) could survive the new dry, lower-oxygen climate.
[/QUOTE]
It doesn’t beat everything already mentioned, but still cool: Rhizhodus hibberti, a 7-metre-long Paleozoic lungfish relative, and possibly the biggest freshwater fish ever.
Good call, and I did a little research. The Crurotarsi, which include the Crocodilia, the closely-related Phytosaurs and Aetosaurs, and a few odds and ends, all date from the Late Triassic, and apparently the big 35-foot forms were contemporary with the heydey of the dinosaurs, not something preceding them. (Counterintuitive fact: crocs are the closest living relatives of birds.)
I’ll leave it to the OP to make a call here. The “time of the dinosaurs” was the last epoch of the Triassic Period, when they got their start and rapidly radiated, then the following Jurassic and Cretaceous Periods, when most of the spectacular dinosaurs flourished. I’d maintain that “contemporary with when they were just getting their start” is “before them,” but can see why others might disagree.
Certainly not the biggest, but perhaps the longest pre-dinosaur animal was a species of crinoid (sea lily) that had a stalk up to 40m (130 ft) in length.
Well, before the dinosaurs, or while they were still one of many groups of creatures struggling for dominance. I know that they shared the planet with several other types of reptiles and creatures for a while before they became the “reigning reptiles” in the late Triassic until the meteor hit at the end of the Cretaceous. (I just don’t remember a lot of the details.)
Mmmm, them’s good eatin’! “Red Eurypterid, for the seafood lover in you…”
Neat post, and well done remembering. Also others’ posts on Rhizodus, and on Dunkleosteus. I actually wrote a fifth-grade essay on the latter. Not 50 years ago, but close enough.
