ExtinctZoo - Prehistoric Creatures You're Glad Are Extinct

Episode Date: February 22, 2026

When we think of the prehistoric times, we often imagine the giant ferocious animals that stomped around. And don't get me wrong, the giants are cool and all, but one shouldn't forget that terrors can call in small packages too...

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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. I know this isn't the first time I've asked you to do this, but just take a second to imagine that you've been transported back in time. And it can be pretty much any time, as long as you make sure to pick a point when prehistoric beasts and creatures were mucking about. Okay, now that you've done that, I want you to picture the worst possible thing you could run into back then. Got it? Well, unfortunately, I cannot use observation hockey to guess the exact animal you picked, but I will guess that you pick something that's an absolute unit, at least compared to us. After all, this is what so many people love about prehistory. It's home to massive creatures

that, in some ways, almost feel mythical, and yet at the same time, they were as real as can be. However, because of this bias and favoritism for the giants of old, you often find that smaller extinct animals go neglected, so to speak. I mean, can you name a prehistoric snake besides Titaniboa or the Vasuki, or a shark besides Megalodon, a prehistoric canine besides the dire wolf? Yeah, you get my drift. And if you do watch my videos in the regular, I hope the answer to those questions were yes, but that's besides the point. The real point is that in general, we think that the worst scleries are big. Yet, ironically in real life, it's often the little guys that cause the most chaos. Like, for example, most studies that question which animals people fear

the most, find that smaller creatures, such as venomous snakes and spiders, are often at the top of the list. And in most studies, it's actually spiders themselves that are top ranked. And keep in mind, the largest spider on the planet at its max size is only the size of a plate. So not that big. And I say only because while this is definitely unsettling, it illustrates out something that is just plate-sized can be scarier to many than, say, an elephant. And this leads one to wonder. We always hear about the giant nightmares of prehistory, but what about the little nightmares? And this led me down a path of researching what exactly were the horrors of the past that came in little packages. And let me just preface that some of the things I found were pretty gnarly.

However, I also found that each was gnarly for a different reason. Some looked horrifying, others dished out proportionally devastating damage for their size, and then there were others that blended a bit of everything together. And I feel like a good place to start is a country that is still well known for harboring its fair share of nightmares. And yes, you probably guessed it right. Australia. Yep, the land of nob, as I like to call it, has a lot of questionable creatures even now. Yet at the same time, mixed in there are a few animals that most people are not extinctively afraid of, and actually which many admire, such as the koala, wombat, and of course the kangaroo. Australia's national animal, which, by the way, actually outnumbers humans,

with their population hovering around 50 million. And this fact might not sound so bad, seeing that they're herbivorous and could be low-key kind of cool, but a while back, 50 million kangaroos would have been a bit more upsetting. Well, actually more like a lot, thanks to the existence of a genus known as the Occulted Delta, an interesting little guy that lived within Australia from the late to Legacine all the way to the Miacine period. But, to be honest, it's kind of wrong for me to call the Occulted Delta a kangaroo,

as it was actually just a close relative, belonging to the same superfamily, but falling under the more specific group known as the Hipsa Prime Nodontoidia, a family of marsupials that is still alive today, but is only represented by one living genus, the musky rat kangaroo, which obviously is no relation to rats, but looks a bit like them, hence the name. Now, a cult of Delta, on the other hand, definitely looked more like a kangaroo than a rat, as it kind of stood like one, just with a more low-down crouch, almost giving it the appearance that was up to no good. And let's just say, it wasn't.

As despite being no heavier than a pug, it was much fysier and off-putting. This marsupial was not a leaf lover, but rather a plurril. bloodthirster, or at least that's the hunch. You see, within the skull of every occulted delta, there were highly specialized chewing teeth that seemed to have evolved for the sole purpose of shearing through flesh while spiting down. And not only this, but they seem strong enough built to munch on copious amounts of meat as well, rather than being limited to a few scraps. And this was the first, good sign that we had a carnivorous kangaroo on our hands.

But perhaps it was a scavenger, or at least one can hope. And to that, I say, well, probably not, as if you were a carnivorous kangaroo on our hands. you looked just a little over from the chompers, you would have found the mother of all premolars. And what I mean by this is that each and every occulta delta had giant oversized premolars that were sharpened to be like spears and jutted out of its mouth just like, well, a spear. And can you guess just how paleontologists believed that it actually used its teeth? Yep, like a spear. It's thought the occulted delta would essentially shank its prey to death, while also stabbing any threat

that got too close. So, we'll probably do well in London. Just kidding. But anyways, so definitely one marsupial I'd have steered clear away from, despite it being relatively small. And frankly, if I came across a large group of these guys, I would not find my greater size to be all that comforting. And really, the only silver lining in all of this, besides their size, is that these marsupials did seem to have a more limited range, with fossils being concentrated solely to northern Queensland, where it's believed they hunted snakes, birds, rodents, monotrems, and then even other marsupials. Not a pleasant picture at all, but honestly, the occulted delta is rather easy in the eyes

when compared to some other little ancient nightmares. I mean, just take a look at the scolacodons. Yeah, yikes. And now you're probably wondering what in the H.E. double hockey stick is the scolacodont. And the answer is, a unnervingly common relic of the past, as this term isn't referring to a genus, but simply is the name for the fossilized jaw pieces of predatory polypeat anilates. In other words, segmented worms.

And we actually still have these guys around. there are still animals like the Bobbit Worm, who, from just one look, should be able to tell you why I'm considering skill acadons to be little nightmares. An animals such as bobbot worms do not only look the part, but they live it too, by doing some pretty devious things, such as burrowing and hiding their entire bodies in soft sediment, from which they then deploy their antennae to detect prey, which thus allows them to stage level 100 sneak attacks on unsuspecting prey, utilizing their razor-sharp mandibles to take out the unlucky and unexpected sucker before then dragging them back within their burrows. And this all goes down in the split of a second.

And let's just say you do not want to know what happens in those burrows, as a, it ain't pretty. So now that you know how scary living bobbot worms are, just imagine how ghoulish, prehistoric, predatory worms would have been. And although this group is still around in some form to fear, the reason why the prehistoric situation was much worse, is because Scalicodons have gotten rare in time when compared to previous periods, meaning, as you go back in time, the might of these worms just grows and grows. And of all the geological periods that come and go, there was a clear point in time in which these carnivorous noodles seemed to be the most common, and that would be the Ordovician,

which took place between 486 and 443 million years ago. This was a period of time when much of the world was submerged, and marine segmented worms were about as common as flies are today, and he would be hard-pressed to have swam in the ocean without encountering one. Since the first discovery, thousands of chalekodons belonging to this age have been identified across the entire world, showcasing that the worms of the Ordovician were strong, and existing in untold numbers. And they didn't just reach their peak when it came to quantity, but also when it came to diversity,

reaching their highest levels of diversity in history, leading to not just one kind, but a plethora of different ugly mugs to look at. You're welcome. However, that being said, because their jaws typically preserve it so much better, than the rest of their bodies, it is hard to say what exactly these guys looked like, as all we know is that at least their jaws came in many different shapes. And in fact, they didn't just come in many different shapes, but also many different sizes. With the vast majority of them, having been no bigger than 2 millimeters,

but a few, whilst not being massive, were pretty dang big in comparison. And so far, it seems like the largest of these predatory worms, based in their mouths at least, would have been about 6'7 inches or about 2 meters long, giving them a grand total weight of around a pound or about half a kilo. So, not large enough to hunt a human, but still plenty big enough to invade our dreams, or rather nightmares. And at the same time, there was another group of smaller animals, which were, albeit unrelated, that I would also define as little prehistoric nightmares, and in some ways they were even

a bit like these segmented worms, and that would be econadons. Now, if you've been subscribed for a bit, you'll know that I've taken a liking to this group of jawless marine vertebrates, which one seems to be a staple to planet's oceans, and can pretty much only be summed up as prehistoric lampreys. Yet, I'd argue that this group was even more unsettling than the present-day lampreys. And why is this, you ask? Well, let's start with the fact that this group had far sharper teeth, which in some cases even protruded from their mouths like some sort of grotesque growth.

And when I say sharper, I mean sharper, much sharper, seeing that conodonts are considered to have had the sharpest teeth of any known animal ever, with some species having tooth-like structures that were not only 300 times sharper than a human's tooth, but 25 times sharper than a butcher's knife. and 120th the width of a single strand of hair, leading to the notion that these guys are able to pierce flesh with very minimal exertion. It seems that across the board, these guys had not only quite the diverse ranges of diet, but also feeding mechanisms, with some possibly, and perhaps unsurprisingly, acting a lot like modern-day lampreys in some sense, essentially boring into the flesh

of other marine animals, only this time with the sharpest tooth in existence. So pretty cool, and kind of scary. As sadly for any time-traveling scuba divers out there, these that will nightmares could grow up to be one meter or 3.3 feet long and stuck around for an excessive amount of time, with a group first having appeared during the Cambrian, half a billion years ago, and only going extinct during the Jurassic, so some 300 million-ish years later. Oh, uh, and did I mention that some evidence suggests that a few were also venomous? Yeah, not exactly an animal you want to bring back to life anytime soon. On the flip side, it is animals like the conodonts, which makes you a bit more tolerant to the fact that we still do of some little nightmares like lampreys, as the alternative

seems that much worse. And I find a similar thing occurs with modern-day bugs. Now, many of us may not like certain kinds of them, and often have profuse reactions to feeling one touch us. But after reading about prehistoric bugs, I am so much more thankful for the ones we got stuck with. And I think a prime example of this is seen with current ants. Sure, some of them can be quite annoying, and also possibly have one of the most painful bites in the world, but you'll still give them a big old kiss when I tell you about the extinct to Tanomirma. And hint, hint, the name alone should probably give you some idea on why this ant was bad news. And it's with this ant that we also arrived to the phenomena that I like to call the little big problem,

which essentially happens when an animal that is relatively small compared to most things becomes horrifyingly horrifying because of how much bigger it is than what we are used to. Let me tell you, you can see this quite clearly with the Titanomirma, who for now is the largest known ant to have ever lived. Found throughout Germany, the U.S., and even Canada during the Eocene, this little, not so little ant was known to grow the size of a hummingbird.

Oh, and like a hummingbird, it had wings as well. So yes, the largest ant ever could fly and had a wingspan that reached over six inches or 15 centimeters long. So just imagine ants the size of little birds buzzing around you. Now with that said, I should...

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That's Indeed.com slash podcast. Terms and conditions apply. Need a hiring hero? This is a job for Indeed sponsored jobs. To clarify that the wings do seem to have been restricted to only queens, so there is that silver lining. But really, this lining is quite thin. Because while not deadly, I'm sure many of you know that getting bit by an ant isn't exactly a pleasant experience. So now imagine how it would feel to be bit by one whose pincers were the size of an entire common black ant's body. And to make things a little bit more dicey, there is a current debate on what it ate. And the emerging idea is not pretty.

Now, one possibility has always been this ant was a leaf cutter, using its mandibles to snip them greens apart. But further research has proposed than in reality these ants who were related to the living African driver ants, a genus of army ants who are known to Martian columns up to 20 million strong and are considered genuine threat. to people, namely those who are disabled or who would struggle removing themselves from danger, such as children and infants. And let me establish the obvious. These guys are tiny compared to the titanomirma, who might have also marched out in similar armies, raiding various areas, nests, and taking down genuinely large animals that they stripped to the bone before then carrying on their march. So next time you come across an ant and say, your garden or on a picnic table,

so to squashing it, maybe show a little bit more hesitation. And honestly, many bugs fall into the same bandwagon, with dragonflies being a classic example, because while not actually being dragonflies, we do other giant lookalike, the meganosoptera, amongst other giant buzzing insects that swarm the prehistoric swamps of the Carboniferous all the way up to the late Permian. Although, like I said, these guys are pretty much the classic example, and so a good chunk of people have heard about them at least once, or seen them in some documentary. But trust me, there are plenty of other nightmarish extinct insects that I highly doubt you've heard of, and one good example of this are the rochoids. Given their name, you may be thinking that this is a group of extinct cockroaches,

on roids, and that is a good logical guess, but technically wrong, because while the succinct group superficially did resemble them, they were something different, albeit not that different, being now generally considered to have been the forerunners to what would one day become modern-day cockroaches, termites, and mantises. However, if you saw one, roaches are the only thing you'd likely confuse it for. They first appeared in the fossil record during late Carboniferous, and seemed to have lived a lot like cockroaches as well, with their diet likely mainly consisting of dead plant and animal matter. However, where they started to get a bit more AEO compared to modern roaches is when it came to delivering babies. You see, nowadays, roaches use oothiqae to have their kids, which are essentially sacks that contain the eggs of the insect.

However, rochoids, in other hand, did not partake in this. Instead, they had ovipositors, long tube-like organs that they used to inject their wee little babies into various substrates, food items, a bit like maggots, meaning we're talking about a reality where you would never know if a slightly old piece of plant material, meat, or something else, was housing a roach infestation. And the other issue with this lot, which made them a bit more uncomfortable, was again the little big problem, as on average, these guys were absolute units, with not one, but multiple species being similar in size or even larger than the current largest genus of roach alive, the megaloblata, which hails from Central America and South America, and is about the size of, well, your entire palm.

So, I personally shuddered to imagine a bunch of these guys roaming about, injecting everything with their babies like a facehugger, from which they would then erupt like a chestburster. Plus, just like the Megaloblata, most not only had wings, but were also capable flyers. So I'll leave the rest up to your imagination. And moving not so far over, from a taxonomic standpoint, there was a relative of the rochoids that I'm quite glad or gone. too. And that would be the manipulator, which surprisingly is not named such because I manipulated my feelings to make me feel horrified. Nope, rather, this guy dates back to the Cretaceous period some hundred million years ago, and was essentially a mixed up between a cockroach and a mantis,

at least looks wise. And the funny thing is that despite looking arguably less like a roach than the roach did, the manipulator was actually a legitimate cockroach, and I don't mean that as an insult, being a real one, just not like any alive today, as this thing was built if. Literally. It had long legs, an elongated neck, sharp mandibles, and then, just to finish it all off, a super flexible head that could freely rotate. And so, what does this all mean when you put it together? And the answer is, apparently the Cretaceous had a predatory cockroach problem on its hands. Yeah, a cockroach that ran around hunting things. And I don't know about you guys, but I think cockroaches when they aren't hunting things are already scary enough. Thankfully, though, these guys were a bit smaller than the rochoids. being just under an inch or two centimeters long.

Though, to be honest, still not a comforting thought, since this implies that predatory cockroaches is well within the realm of possibilities for evolution. Nobue. And something else that isn't a comforting thought is pranhas. You know, those carnivorous fish that traveling groups have wicked sharp teeth and can devour entire food items in mere seconds and are voracious enough that they even got their own horror movie, Prana 3D. Yet no living prana, no matter how frightening they are, can still.

stand their ground, or I guess swim their water, against one genus who is now, thankfully, long gone, and whose name was simply the megaprana. Nine million years ago, within the fresh tropical waterways of prehistoric Argentina, this fish reigned near supreme, being a prana, or rather Sarasamade, like no other. On paper, it did share certain common similarities you tend to see in extant pranas, such as the same general body construction, and its appearance overall was quite generic for prana. Yet, its body size was a whole different story, as not to beat a dead horse, but this is once again a situation where something that is usually known for being on the smaller side

was just a tad bit too large for comfort. And when I say tad, I mean, a lot. Now, obviously, even nowadays, piranhas can inflict some pretty impressive pain for their size given their razor-sharp teeth, as well as mobbing behavior, whether having been cases where people have lost fingers, toes, and extreme cases, even died after being swarmed. And this all happens, despite pranas typically being no larger than your hand. So then, imagine what happens when we look at the megaprona, where we are suddenly talking about a genus where your hand could have literally fit in one's mouth,

as matured individuals measured nearly 30 inches long or 2.5 feet, making them the longest known predatorial Sarah Salmonds, and by far the heaviest, with megapronas weighing at 22 pounds or roughly 10 kilos. So yeah, this creature was inarguably terrifying, as it had everything that makes its modern counterpart scary, except in this case that everything was just worse. Take their teeth, for example. They weren't only razor sharp and larger, but ridiculously powerful, even for its size,

as it was backed by a super-efficient jaw that let it bite with the force of nearly 3,000 neutrons, possibly more, which, by the way, is greater than the biting force of a full-grown tiger, despite it being, oh, you know, 30 times smaller. And given the shape of its teeth, this power went a long way as well. with one study that reproduced its teeth, finding that a megaprana was likely able to penetrate the femur of a cow, the shell of a turtle, and the armor of various catfish species with a single bite,

leading to the notion that this little fish was mainly interested in big catches, if you get my drift. And what's more is that the design of the teeth were made to ensure maximum pain no matter what you were or where it bit you. As on contact with flesh, the stress would be most directed along the tips, allowing it to slice through copious amounts of meat like butter. and then if it hit hard bone, cartilage, or some sort of armor, that stress would then start distributing equally amongst the base of the teeth, allowing it to keep biting down and start

gnawing through your bones. So, not a pleasant way to go. And it was seemingly so capable of killing that opposed to modern-day pranhas that usually prowl in shoals, it is believed to have been a solitary killer, as no need for backup when you can gobble a cow femur on your own, which also perhaps makes it a bit less scary, but I'd rather not test that hypothesis. So evidently, this fish was one scary goober. But what about when it's not just one thing in the pond that brings the terror? Instead, it's everything in the pond that are tiny nightmares. Where being small and nightmarish isn't the exception, but rather the darn rule. And as it so turns out, such a pond, or rather time, actually exists, as perhaps no other

period fits the bill of little nightmares better than the Cambrian. Now, we already know that the farther you go back in time, the weirder things seem to become. And seeing that this period played out half a billion years ago, life back then was downright alien. And a lot of this had to do with an important event that had just transpired, the Cambrian explosion, in which a sudden radiation of complex life led to major diversification amongst nearly all realms, and was the time when virtually every major animal phyla first appeared in the fossil records. And being the progenitors to many, just about everything alive during the Cambrian was not only beyond primitive looking, but also in many cases just downright disturbing. And then

also to fit the bill, tiny too. In fact, one of the largest known animals from the entire time period was just about two kilos or 4.4 pounds in weight, the Anomelacharis, a very odd-looking arthropod that was a voracious predator for its time, being one of the earliest known examples of an apex predator, armed with two versatile appendages that let it grasp and manipulate prey. And this little tear was actually just one member, the diverse order, known as the Radiodonts, which themselves fell into an even broader class, known as the Dino-Caradida, that housed other freaky groups, such as the Opabinidae, with their proboscis-like appendages, and then the Karag Mac Kelliday, which had horizontal appendages used for capturing prey, but were lined with

numerous disturbing spikes and rods, giving these guys looks like a kill. Seriously, if I was waiting in the water and felt one of these guys touched my toes, game over. Extinct Zoo is now extinct. And they weren't the only ones to avoid with your toes, as you also had the Lobopodians, which I like to refer to as worms from hell, mostly because a lot of them looked like if you touch them, you die in some very horrible manner. And the most iconic amongst them were the Lucigenia and the Acheia, and were also both residents at the same place, the Burgess Shale within Canada. And though both of them definitely make you go WTF, I dare say they're not actually the craziest of the lot. I mean, you also had the Collins of Vermis, a monstrosity full of tentacle-like appendages, blind of the bristles, and spikes along its back,

making it look like it crawled out of Stephen King's The Mist. Then there were similar members, like the Evadya Vermis, or general that might as well be cosplaying a swimming-moving cactus, such as Diania. And then, if somehow none of this was enough for you, there were members like face of Vermis, who seriously might as well have inspired the facehucker from Alien, is it at a superficially similar-looking body, although I will say that in reality, it was a bit less scary, doing less jumping at faces and more rooting itself on the ground whilst waiting for tiny food to drift on by. But honestly, I'm still glad that half a billion years separates it from me, and the same thing goes for the Anikidikdion, plus many, many, many, more.

After all, like I said, this period had nigh endless amount of animals that looked like they could play a monster in a sci-fi movie, and I haven't even yet started talking about an entirely other separate group, known as the Morellamorpha, which was superficially passed for a trilobite gone wrong, which makes sense since they are somewhat related to the trilobites and likely lived a bit like them as far as diet and niching goes, just much scarier looking. And so, this is all to say that while it's the big giants that might have us running away in our nightmares, I think it's rather the little horrors that truly get under our skin. Thanks for watching, and until next time, on Extinctsou.

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