What extinct animals would make for good creatures in a fantasy setting?

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*Non-avian dinosaurs. Better?

Now have a Phorusrhacos. 2.5 meters high and scary as fuck.

Imagine a late Cenozoic setting human small band vs. Megafauna. And our only fucking allies are literal fucking Tapirs and tiny shitters.

You dont even have to go that back, Moas still existed up to 1880

>I personally really like Entelodonts
I'm guessing you'll really like Exalted 3e, then.

Apparently I suck dicks and they were gone by 1440 +/- 20yrs error. And 1880 was when they started parading a complete Fossil.

INTERIOR CROCODILE ALLIGATOR

Diprotodon aka the giant wombat. Australia had some cool megafauna.

They're giant goannas.

Haast's eagle is pretty cool. Used to hunt 200 kilogram Moa.

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Giant platypus.

You might have been thinking of Madagascan Elephant Birds, who may have lasted to about that time.

en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Elephant_bird

Brother, Madagascar isnt something we humans should have fucked with, it was this tiny little awesome thing and we just had to fuck it up. Tbt when Dodos were a thing.

Moas were big, but they were essentially giant kiwis. Docile and harmless.

Here's Ornimegalonyx or Cuban giant owl. Over a meter tall, it was the apex predator of the island. These would be amazing as pets or dog/cat substitute.

Never said they were this enemy to be feared if anything Haast's eagles were the fucking thing to fear.

Here's the best eagle, or rather condor. Argentavis magnificens.

that's a retarded analogy

>Paraceratherium
What would the locals call them? Paraceratherium would not pass the 'stable hand daily use' test

So now we know Rocs existed. It's either this or the Quebrantahuesos from Spain.

Paraceras.

biggus dikkus

Paracera > Parcera > Parsra

I also love the fact that at some point, less than 200k years ago on Malta giant swans hunted tiny elephants. And that's awesome!

Dinos have teeth. Terror birds have beaks.

>Megistotherium osteothlastes was an enormous hyaenodontid that lived 23 million years ago. It is one of the largest terrestrial carnivorous mammals known to have existed. It was about 1.5 meters high at the shoulders and 3.5 meters in head and body length, with a 1 meter long tail and a 65 cm long skull. Its body mass has been estimated at 500 kg or 880 kg.

Hell, it's like an African polar bear. Dire anything has nothing on this monster!

>while sailing to another part of the continent, your party's boat is attacked by a Liopleurodon
What do?

Laugh at it

>the most deadly predator of the Jurassic is watching his prey

OK, you know how baboons are this big scary motherfuckers with large fangs, who work in groups? Well there once was a baboon as tall as a human, ON ALL FOURS!

It's still the size of a Great White though.

Pray

Aint there mosasaurs that grew realy big?

There's one Mosasaur species they reckon was about 17 meters long, one of the actual Mosasuars

Liopleurodon was reckoned to be about 6.4 meters, but the biggest in its family, Kronosaurus, is thought to have been 10-12 meters

Mammals are still the best. Basilosaurus baby! 18m long!

That's just an orc

I DRIVE A CHEVROLET MOVIE THEATER

My nigga. Orcs in my setting ride entelodonts instead wargs or any other habitual mount. There's a background explanation for it, but I picked them just because I find them fuckin terrifying.

>there could have been prehistoric elves but we wouldn't be able to tell from their skeletons

Giant komodos

Mtg calls them Indriks, from Indrikotherium.

Fuck off elves, humans are the master race

Check out these videos. The descriptions have the animals' names.

youtu.be/AtVGwHPzyNc

youtu.be/rRiecAmGWHU

I like megatheriums. Have a republic of not!gauchos megatherium herders in the setting.

>>
They are descended from dinosaurs, so they're dinosaurs. That's what matters.

>What would the locals call them? Paraceratherium would not pass the 'stable hand daily use' test

Thundercows.

>giant carnivorous armadillos.
Aren't regular armadillos carnivorous anyway

Christ, what a scene.

Woolceronts

rhinos made out of wool, they lived in Europe until the Vikings killed them all. Disgusting, really.

what is that horn for?

just like hippopotamus, right?

dumbass

>Dire Megistotherium
Check and mate.

I hope this is bait

I can do you one better

People who play ark have to deal with them on the regular and use the term "Paracer". Rolls of the tongue easily and is easily extendable to the full name.

Were they poisonous also, like modern platypuses?

Andrewsarchus. Basically a wolf the size of an elephant.

The marsupial "lion" and it's killer thumbs

We call those hippos you mong.

Pterygotus and friends

That's it's nose.

Why everything on Earth was much bigger than it is now?
Will all existing species if leaved alone evolve into even more small creatures with enough time?

Those reptiles that decided to become mammals were also cool.

The atmosphere was more oxygen rich way back when, giving these things enough air to breath to enable their huge size

Half a meter shorter, but it more than makes up for it in the all important mouth-to-body-size ratio.

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Oh 'e's a beaut!

We're just now exiting a major climatic period. Large animals tend to be specialists or otherwise live in relatively precarious ecological niches. Since the end of the last Ice Age most of the megafauna has gotten smaller in size because the largest creatures just couldn't survive the rapid climate shift.

That, plus the fact that early humans probably hunted those struggling large animals most aggressively, lead to them all pretty quickly disappearing over the last million years or so. There's no real trend towards smaller animals, except in regards to invertebrates due to lower oxygen in the atmosphere.

It depends on the enviromental pressures, if being big is a problem it will give advantage to the smaller ones to live and reproduce, that's what happens on islands.

But getting bigger can help sometimes, sometimes small animals become bigger to fill an echological niche that made itself available due to enviromental change or the extinction of previously existing animals.

>reptiles
Not really.

And it's more like a pig in the shape of a wolf.

>Not really.
What were they then?

I had been led to believe it was more like a goat in the shape of a wolf.

Also, land crocodiles.

youtube.com/watch?v=mZbmywzGAVs

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A lot of this is just picking the biggest things that have existed. Not necessarily living at the same time.

Modern Elephants are pretty fucking big even compared to a lot of megafuana, and the Blue Whale is the biggest animal that has ever lived

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Y'know, most of the time psuedoscience is boring garbage. Occasionally though, it produces extremely cool garbage. This is one of those times.

>Oh 'e's a beaut!
I miss him Veeky Forums. :(

how do we bring the oxygen back? We need to be bigger, we need to stop humans from being manlets

Whales are bigger than ever, or they were until very recently (like with elephants' tusks)

Humans could get big irrespective of the amount of oxygen. Oxygen only becomes a problem for insects because of the way they breath. Vertebrates don't care about it.

so we would be small?
Also, there's no way we get this amount of xygen again after that FUCKIN ASTEROID MADE EVERYTHING GO DOWNHILL

Humans are the surviving "elves" of Earth, it's the hobbits (Homo floresiensis), giants (Gigantopithecus), orcs (Neanderthals) and others who are extinct now.

I was about to say the same thing. Fake, but cool.

Eh, it's not that bad really. IMO it's just as valid as current theories, and he has a point abut the eyes and the primate characteristics.

Can a more anthropologically inclined user explain why this is definitely fake? I mean, it sounds pretty plausible in the video.

bumop

>baboon orcs
Thank you for this.

Well for one thing, it completely disregards that Neanderthals were humans by modern anthropological standards. Also, Half a million years is nothing on an evolutionary scale, and it certainly isnt enough for Neanderthals to become black-skinned, red-eyed demons.
Although i will concede he has points about skull shape and diet.

it blows my mind that 90% of all species are extinct.