rośliny-i-grzyby: Thylacosmilus

Evidence: 100 • authority: 72

Thylacosmilus is an extinct genus of saber-toothed metatherian mammals that inhabited South America from the Late Miocene to Late Pliocene epochs. Though Thylacosmilus looks similar to the "saber-toothed cats", it was not a felid, like the well-known American Smilodon, but a sparassodont, a group closely related to marsupials, and only superficially resembled other saber-toothed mammals due to convergent evolution, with the aforementioned Thylacosmilus being one of the last known sparassodonts. A 2005 study found that the bite forces of Thylacosmilus and Smilodon were low, which indicates that the killing techniques of saber-toothed animals differed from those of extant species. Remains of…

Evidence: 38 • authority: 72

Pampaluctor is an extinct genus of metatherian mammal in the Thylacosmilidae, a family of carnivorous, saber-toothed sparassodonts. The genus contains a single species, Pampaluctor calibar, known from a partial skeleton. It is known from the Vorohué Formation of Argentina, which is assigned to the Vorohuean subage of the Marplatan South American land mammal age (SALMA), which is correlated to the late Pliocene to early Pleistocene epochs. With an estimated body mass of around 100 kilograms (220 lb), Pampaluctor is among the largest known mammalian predators from South America. It is also the geologically youngest thylacosmilid (and sparassodont), as other members of this clade did not cross…

Evidence: 22 • authority: 72

The largest prehistoric animals include both vertebrate and invertebrate species. Many of them are described below, along with their typical range of size (for the general dates of extinction, see the link to each). Many species mentioned might not actually be the largest representative of their clade due to the incompleteness of the fossil record and many of the sizes given are merely estimates since no complete specimen have been found. Their body mass, especially, is largely conjecture because soft tissue was rarely fossilized. Generally, the size of extinct species was subject to energetic and biomechanical constraints.