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26 New Comparisons Of The Sizes Of Prehistoric Animal Ancestors And Their Modern Relatives By Roman Uchytel
Interview With Artist
Have you heard of myths about how back in the day on earth, there used to live gargantuan giants? Well, I think our ancestors had a pretty good hunch about what really happened, actually. Most of our modern animals are so small compared to what the animals used to be like, but there are some interesting exceptions to the rule.
How do I know all of this? Roman Uchytel, an Ukrainian paleontologist and graphic designer, recreates them with the tools available and shares them online for everyone to learn and see an actual scale of how different our ancestors were, both in size and other features. His previous post was a hit, so let us show you some of his most recent work.
More info: Instagram | twitter.com | prehistoric-fauna.com | Facebook | deviantart.com
This post may include affiliate links.
The modern red panda is adorable. The extinct version is scary panda. A big nope.
Though doing this is Roman's passion, unfortunately, he has more pressing matters on his mind. His country is being attacked, and he shared with Bored Panda about what's going on over there. "After eight days of bombing, I was forced to go with my family from Kharkiv to the Dnipropetrovsk region. It’s still quiet here, but the situation could change at any second..."
Now, now, Nathaniel, it is nothing to fawn over.
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The Irish Elk is reminding me of the Forest Spirit from Princess Mononoke :o
The giant deer was a bad candidate for long term survival in part because of its antler size. If a predator approached from behind, the deer was unable to quickly turn its head to see it. If it did, the torque of its antlers would have snapped its neck. In short the giant deer was a sitting duck.
And if you drink enough guiness then you'll see them being ridden by leprechauns
Load More Replies... There’s a skull and antlers of one of these at a museum near me, it was ridiculously huge, it’s a wonder that they could lift their heads at all.
Modern deer are impressive and much larger than you think. They can easily kill a person. I'd run screaming if I saw one of those giant extinct deer even from afar.
How does the littler one have spots AND a rack??? I thought the spots went away and I know they arent born with a full rack.
Can you imagine if they WERE born with a full rack. Ouch.
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Odd that the comparison isn't made with a modern elk. Fallow deer aren't a particularly big species of deer. ...Okay, after checking apparently fallow deer are the closest living relative of the Irish elk, so I guess that makes sense.
These guys are so fun to use on Ark. And when you level them up in their attack, they're actually pretty heavy hitters. There are much better things around for everything it can do (hell, even the therazine is better run all respects and then some), but it's just SO FUN
Umm, okay, but modern elks ARE huge. Why compare an extinct elk to a modern deer? That’s just fricking stupid.
Because the one's fecking extinct
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I'd like to see a moose in this pic too. They are truly still of prehistoric size, and they are terrifying.
imagine all the deer steak and jerky from that thing my mouth is watering thinking about it
I'd like to saddle up that big guy, and ride through a forest acting all imperious and mystical. 😂
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Wolves are much bigger than you realize until you are next to one.
I wonder if the temperaments were the same. Wolverines are supposed to be fierce and bad tempered enough.
It's so sad that they fight bulls. It's really stupid. I mean, they just kill the bull for the sake of entertainment. A life is more important than our entertainment, especially when a billion other things tat can entertain us.Edit: I think eating meat is fine, but I think that the animals should be treated fairly, and they shouldn't have such a gruesome death.
I watched a really cool documentary that raised stag beetles in two different environments, one more oxygen rich (like today's atmosphere) and one more CO2 rich (like more ancient times) and the difference in the size of the beetles was quite shocking. Apparently for some reason a whole bunch of animals were much bigger because of more CO2 in the atmosphere. I am unable to explain why because I watch the documentaries, but I don't make them!
Maybe this is why ancient people thought that there existed large mythical beasts before as they might've seen fossils or heard stories passed on in the community. From a Xianxia perspective, every creature was very strong since they were closer to the Dao as the world had just been created. This reminds me of "Tales of Herding Gods", where the beings born just after the creation of the world like the Celestial Emperor purposely created a huge cage for the Humans, making them believe that they were living in a free world. That would ensure that these Humans with unlimited potential unlike them would never grow strong enough to be able to overthrow them. Alas, they didn't know that the lives of Humans are higher than the Heavens.
Scary to think that we probably all have ancestors who ended up killed by one of these.
Its so cool how realistic they look! I love art that shows how prehistoric animals would look, its called paleoart
We could do with a banana for scale for some of these - the modern Virginia opossum, for example.
Aslong as my forearm, and I'm 70 inches tall, or 177 cm. They live around me and i deal with them all the time.
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I want to know why (almost) all of them used to be so big. Why did they evolve into smaller animals?
The climate at the time supported huge swathes of grassland and bushes, but not many trees and most of the megafauna were either grazing animals or large predators eating them.
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Homo sapiens co-existed with megafauna for tends of thousands of years. Those weren't "myths". Those were stories handed down, with some distortions. (Giants in the Bible, anyone?_)
So all of the extinct versions were much larger except the tapir and the panda! Hmmm?
Mehh didn't get the size scale, they should have used a banana for it!
Why were ancient animals usually bigger than there modern conterparts. Is there a reason?
The "usually" bigger issue has to do with climate and availability of food. Many animals adapted to conditions specific to the ice ages, and when those ended, their niche was no longer viable. They were *too* adapted. Smaller, more generalist animals (modern wolves, for example) could hunt a great variety of prey, in a greater variety of conditions. Megafauna tended to prey on megafauna, judging by the La Brea tarpit remains. And, frankly, some of the megafauna adaptations just weren't going to work well in the long run. Saber teeth, for one. And their sheer size (caloric intake requirements!) was against them. And when climate shifts, as it did, they didn't have enough generations to adapt. We're seeing it now around us as climate zones shift ---- certain plants can't grow where they used to, but other plants (more opportunistic) move in. This held true for the dinosaurs. The largest ones seemed to have lived in specific conditions, then conditions favored animals that weren't huge
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Interesting but "Hobbith" sort of murdered me from the inside (I am an anthropologist). Now I am not sure how relevant the rest are
Wouldn't it be great if there were an adult human added to show the relation in height/size? That would be awesome.
Not everything. Some got to be way bigger such as the blue whale
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I watched a really cool documentary that raised stag beetles in two different environments, one more oxygen rich (like today's atmosphere) and one more CO2 rich (like more ancient times) and the difference in the size of the beetles was quite shocking. Apparently for some reason a whole bunch of animals were much bigger because of more CO2 in the atmosphere. I am unable to explain why because I watch the documentaries, but I don't make them!
Maybe this is why ancient people thought that there existed large mythical beasts before as they might've seen fossils or heard stories passed on in the community. From a Xianxia perspective, every creature was very strong since they were closer to the Dao as the world had just been created. This reminds me of "Tales of Herding Gods", where the beings born just after the creation of the world like the Celestial Emperor purposely created a huge cage for the Humans, making them believe that they were living in a free world. That would ensure that these Humans with unlimited potential unlike them would never grow strong enough to be able to overthrow them. Alas, they didn't know that the lives of Humans are higher than the Heavens.
Scary to think that we probably all have ancestors who ended up killed by one of these.
Its so cool how realistic they look! I love art that shows how prehistoric animals would look, its called paleoart
We could do with a banana for scale for some of these - the modern Virginia opossum, for example.
Aslong as my forearm, and I'm 70 inches tall, or 177 cm. They live around me and i deal with them all the time.
Load More Replies... I want to know why (almost) all of them used to be so big. Why did they evolve into smaller animals?
The climate at the time supported huge swathes of grassland and bushes, but not many trees and most of the megafauna were either grazing animals or large predators eating them.
Load More Replies... Homo sapiens co-existed with megafauna for tends of thousands of years. Those weren't "myths". Those were stories handed down, with some distortions. (Giants in the Bible, anyone?_)
So all of the extinct versions were much larger except the tapir and the panda! Hmmm?
Mehh didn't get the size scale, they should have used a banana for it!
Why were ancient animals usually bigger than there modern conterparts. Is there a reason?
The "usually" bigger issue has to do with climate and availability of food. Many animals adapted to conditions specific to the ice ages, and when those ended, their niche was no longer viable. They were *too* adapted. Smaller, more generalist animals (modern wolves, for example) could hunt a great variety of prey, in a greater variety of conditions. Megafauna tended to prey on megafauna, judging by the La Brea tarpit remains. And, frankly, some of the megafauna adaptations just weren't going to work well in the long run. Saber teeth, for one. And their sheer size (caloric intake requirements!) was against them. And when climate shifts, as it did, they didn't have enough generations to adapt. We're seeing it now around us as climate zones shift ---- certain plants can't grow where they used to, but other plants (more opportunistic) move in. This held true for the dinosaurs. The largest ones seemed to have lived in specific conditions, then conditions favored animals that weren't huge
Load More Replies... Interesting but "Hobbith" sort of murdered me from the inside (I am an anthropologist). Now I am not sure how relevant the rest are
Wouldn't it be great if there were an adult human added to show the relation in height/size? That would be awesome.
Not everything. Some got to be way bigger such as the blue whale
Load More Replies...