ExtinctZoo - If Dinosaurs Faced Off Against Mammals

Episode Date: September 3, 2025

Animals are pretty metal today, and of the many kinds that exist, we mammals are pretty cool, but how do we stack up against the 'coolest' group ever, the dinosaurs? Welcome to the Dino/Mammal Olympic.

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At First Citizens Bank, we roll with your goals because we're built for what you're building. Fit for your ambition for Citizens Bank. Thanks to mainstream media, we typically regard extinct animals, namely dinosaurs, as being larger than life. Routinely, we witness these terrible lizards pull off crazy feats in movies, like biting through metal, tanking bullets, and outrunning vehicles, leading to the common idea that dinosaurs were superior to mammals in nearly every way. But is this really true? In answer this question, we created nine different categories where we pitched dinosaurs and mammals against each other to see how they really stack up. This is the dinosaur mammal Olympics.

The first category is one that many probably think is an easy win for dinosaurs. Size. After all, it is dinosaurs that hold the record for the largest land animal of all time. Yet, when it comes to overall size, it's actually us mammals that hold the edge, with the current largest known mammal being the blue whale, which at its heaviest can weigh a staggering 200 tons, or about three times the weight of a battle tank. At this weight, it easily outclasses all non-controversial dinosaur weight estimates that we have, with the largest estimates usually being attributed to the Argentinosaurus, which could have weighed between 65 and 90 tons. However, things do get a lot more spicy when considering fragmentary sauropods as well,

like the mysterious Bruhathcaosaurus. This Indian titanosaur is only known from written dimensions, on a bone that disintegrated decades ago, making accurate weight estimates questionable. But the estimates we do have paint it to be an absolute behemoth, with a 2023 study predicting that adults weighed anywhere from 110 to 170 tons at maximum. This puts it much closer to the blue whale in terms of weight, but it still isn't enough to get the gold medal. What's interesting, though, is that despite mammals winning in the weight department,

it's the dinosaurs who pull ahead when focusing on length and height, with height in particular being a landslide wind. Of all the mammals we know of, the tallest was likely the Paracyrithyrium, a giant extinct hornless rhino that could stand at 8 meters or 26 feet while extending its neck. This is impressive, but nothing compared to the tallest dinosaur, the Sauro Poseidon. This sauropod lived in what is now North America during the early Cretaceous and could reach 59 feet or 18 meters tall, making it more than three times taller than the current tallest animal, the giraffe.

And unsurprisingly, it's again saropods that hold the metal for being the longest, with the supersaurus and Argentinosaurus being at the front of the pack, with both reaching 130 feet or 39.7 meters in length. With such great length, these dimensions on a living animal are hard to picture, but there is actually a living mammal that comes awfully close to these two lengthy titans, and that is the already mentioned blue whale, which at its longest has been measured at 110 feet or 33.6 meters. The battle of size is clearly quite bitter between both groups, and this intensity only increases when asking the opposite question of which was the smallest.

When we focus on non-avian dinosaurs, their champion is the Anki Ornus, a four-winged per-avian dinosaur that resided in China during the late Jurassic. This little guy as an adult was sometimes only 34 centimeters or 1.1 feet long while weighing a measly 110 grams or 3.9 ounces, making it the same weight as a kiwi fruit. This is small, except not that small when we consider avian dinosaurs too, as certain birds have gotten ridiculously tiny, with the tiniest being the bee hummingbird, which lives in Cuba. This little guy is so small that a night if it flew into you, you would likely think it was a bug rather than a bird, as it only weighs 1.95 grams, which is lighter than the weight

of certain cockroaches and spiders. Its wingspan is also extremely lackluster, being less than that of the cabbage white butterfly, the most common butterfly in North America. This makes it a truly minute creature, and yet the mammals have a pretty good counter, the Etruscan true. It's the smallest known extant mammal by mass and is found throughout the entire eastern hemisphere. Though even if you live in this part of the world, you probably have never noticed it, and that's because its entire body is shorter than your thumb and narrower than your ring and

index finger, making it a tad bit smaller than hummingbirds, with adults being about 8% lighter than their winged foe. enough, mammals at one point in time got even smaller than this, as demonstrated by the 53 million-year-old Baranoides. This ancient mammal wasn't a shrew, but was true like an appearance and was smaller than any known mammal or bird, making it the smallest known synapsid to ever live. Fully grown individuals got no heavier than 1.3 grams or 0.5 ounces, making them 20% lighter than the Truskin Trues. In fact, this prehistoric critter was so small that if alive today, it would be able to comfortably rest its entire body on a pencil eraser. That's pretty

amazing, and gives the mammals a comfortable lead over dinosaurs in terms of smallness. But the same cannot be said when we look at the next category, teeth. And not necessarily the size of teeth, but rather the sheer number. Many mammals do have a lot of teeth, with a notable example being the armadillo, which can sometimes house 100 teeth at once. This helps it ground up termites and ants, while also making it the extant to land mammal with the most teeth. However, in the water things get more competitive, as many cetaceans possess numerous teeth, with certain types of dolphin species even breaking the 100 mark. And one species in particular, the spinner dolphin takes it up a notch by having more than 200 teeth.

This toothy mammal is found in shallow tropical waters throughout the world, and currently is the undisputed toothiest mammal ever, sometimes containing 60 sharp and pointed teeth on each side of its top and lower jaw. So, it's obvious that some mammals have a lot of chompers. However, mammals still get absolutely crushed by dinosaurs when it comes to this category, with dozens of dinosaur species being known to have had 300 plus teeth. Perhaps the most famous example of this comes from the sarapod, Nigerosaurus, whose wide muzzle was filled with more than 500 teeth, which were specially adapted for browsing plants

close to the ground. Its vast amount of teeth were arranged in a specific pattern referred to as a dental battery, which is quite common amongst dinosaurs, especially hadrosaurs and serotops, who at times pushed this extreme even further. In fact, even the iconic triceratops is thought to have had more teeth, possessing a battery of up to 800 individual teeth at any given time. Although it was the hadrosaurs that were the true champs is not one, but multiple species are thought to have had numerous layers of tiny teeth numbering over 1,000, one example being

the Edmontosaurus. That's more than five times the amount found in the spinner dolphin and 31 times more than what humans possess. These hadroosaurs had the numbers, but it's not just about how many teeth you have, more so about what you can do with them, which leads to our next category, bite force. It's probably best to start with the dinosaurs, as their top talent is no hidden secret, and that is the Tyrannosaurus Rex. This monstrous predator holds a large list of accolades, with the strongest bite of any

dinosaur being one of them. Even the juveniles packed quite the punch, with studies finding their bite force to have been around 5,640 newtons, putting them somewhere between hyenas and crocodiles. And things only got scarier as they grew older, with adults biting down 10 times harder than the youngsters, with estimates ranging from 35,000 newtons to over 60,000, which is more force than what is seen in the thrust of certain planes. Understandably, mammals don't really have an answer to this, with the strongest confirmed bite force when it comes to non-marine mammals belonging to the hippo,

which registers at 8,000 newtons. Things do get slightly better though when we look at marine mammals, namely the extinct whales, bacillosaurus, and zygophyseter, both of which were their ecosystems respective apex predators. Zygophyseter, a type of sperm whale was the smaller of the two and possessed the weaker bite, with studies measuring it at roughly 11,000 newtons,

similar to the bite of a spinosaurus. Meanwhile, the larger bacillosaurus was capable of delivering maximum force of 20,000 nons, thus bringing mammals a little bit closer to the T-Rex, yet not close enough. This gives dinosaurs yet another win in the teeth department. However, a bit ironically, they actually lose when it comes to teeth size. In this area, their top contender is again the T-Rex, whose teeth can grow to be 12 inches or 30 centimeters, the same length as the ruler.

These teeth allowed the T-Rex to pierce the hides of multi-toned dinosaurs with ease. That being said, there is one mammal that completely wipes the T-Rex away when it comes to tooth size. The elephant. This is because their iconic tusks are really just modified incisors that never stop growing. In large males, these tusks can reach a staggering 3.5 meters or 11.5 feet, making them 11 times bigger than the longest known T-Rex tooth. And this impressive display doesn't end with the elephant. As teeth or tusks sizes get bigger when we examine ancient elephants like the giant,

Paleoloxidon and Zygolophon, both of which had tusks over 5 meters or 16 feet. Some people may consider using tusks to be a cheap move, as after all we typically think of teeth as being used specifically for chewing or biting. But even if we remove tusks that are not used for these purposes, mammals still have yet another decisive winner, the hippopotamus. These guys also have giant incisors and canines, which despite being referred to as tusks, are still actually used to bite things. namely each other.

The canines of particular can reach exceptional lengths, and on average are twice the size of a T-Rex tooth, with the largest recorded to date being 48 inches or 122 centimeters from top to bottom, making them just a little bit longer than a standard golf club. And it may come as a surprise that it's also mammals who hold an edge in the horn department. This may be a shock due to the fact that many seratops over the years have gotten famous solely for their giant horns. Amongst them the most well known is the triceratops, who also holds the top position amongst dinosaurs,

with larger individuals believed to have wielded horns that were as long as your typical seven-year-old child. Additionally, the triceratops wasn't alone in first place, as three other serotopsians are known to have equalled it in horn size, including the contemporary Taurosaurus and the earlier pentaceratops and coahuala serotops. All four of these dinosaurs weighed over one ton, and yet none had horns as big as one mammal still alive today, which only weighs half a ton, the water buffalo. This bovid is found within the eastern hemisphere and possesses two horns that are known to widely vary in size across specific populations. Typically, they're about half the size of what is seen in the four seratops, but in large elderly males, it's a different story, as their horns can grow to be

five feet or 1.5 meters long, roughly 25% larger than a triceratops horn. And one particular buffalo that was shot in 1955, had horns adorfed even these numbers, as each one measured 6.5 feet or 2 meters, making them taller than the average NFL player. Though, no matter how large these giant horns and previously mentioned teeth are, they're still no good if an animal can't even reach their intended target to use them on, which begs the final question of who was faster, mammals or dinosaurs. When analyzing who could run the fastest, the faceoff is between Ornithymosaurs and cheetahs. A major difference between these two is that or nithymosaurs were bipedal, while the cheetah is a quadrupede, though both are undeniably fast.

Within the Ornithymimusor clade Drimisomymus was the fastest, being able to reach 50 miles or 80 kilometers an hour while at full sprint, making it twice as fast as Usain Bolt's top speed. Though this still isn't enough to dethrone the Cheetah, which can clock in at 80 miles or 128 kilometers per hour. Faster than the operating speed of most trains in the United States, and fast enough that it would likely be ticketed on a highway. Despite this incredible speed, one shouldn't count dinosaurs out just yet. yet. Because while mammals pull away in running speed, they don't in overall speed, since dinosaurs have a secret weapon. Birds.

Today, there are over 10,000 species of birds, many of which are highly adapted for flying. So naturally, there are few exceptionally speedy birds, with the fastest being the Peregrine Falcon. This bird of prey is known for its hunting method that involves high-speed dives, which can see mind-blowing speeds of up to 389 kilometers an hour or 242 miles per hour, making it faster than a Lamborghini of Ventador and the fastest creature in the animal kingdom, giving dinosaurs one more decisive victory. While dinosaurs ultimately pulled ahead in this competition, it is much closer than most people would probably think. And who knows, maybe one day,

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