ExtinctZoo - The Most Brutal Prehistoric Injuries Ever Survived

Episode Date: December 14, 2025

To you and me, these wounds are fatal, but to prehistoric animals that were simply built diff, it wasn't anything but a flesh wound.

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on April 30th, the powerful vocals of Demi Lovato on May 17th, and the signature Southern Country Rock of Eric church on July 19th. Tickets on sale now at yamava Theater.com, only at Yamava Resort and Casino, celebrating its 40th anniversary. You in? Must be 21 to enter. It's no secret that prehistoric earth is a trove of mystery and wonder. It seems like the further we go back, the crazier things get, and the world looks less and less like the one we occupy today. And because of this, the past has become an interesting time to imagine, especially thinking about what time traveling to back then would be like.

Yet, if there really was a magical button that could permanently send you back in time, I am sure you'd be hard-pressed to, well, press it. Or at least I would. As it doesn't take a genius to figure out that prehistoric Earth was exceptionally brutal and home to many tough sons of a gun. Dinosaurs, saber-toothes, woolly mammoths, mosasors, etc., etc. You get the picture. Their sizes, feats, and durability are all legendary.

But sometimes it takes a real unique fossil to remind us of just how metal they truly were. And I would say, the most famous examples of this are perhaps those that showcase two animals stuck in eternal battle, like the infamous fighting dinosaurs. Intense, no doubt. But what I think actually demonstrates the true grit of prehistoric animals best are the specimens who bear gruesome wounds, scars, disease, etc. And yet somehow still managed to carry on, in some cases making full recoveries, and making me darn ashamed of how I react to blood tests.

And because prehistoric animals were so bonkers, there's actually a long list of examples to choose from. But a pretty good place to start with an animal that got his face literally snatched. Like they're not snatched, their face got snatched. And yet somehow lived to tell the tail. And what was this? A prognathodon. Now, you might not have heard of this animal before, but it belonged to the iconic

Mosasaur's and was actually one of the largest members to have appeared, with the longest specimens in record reaching about 12 meters or 39 feet from snout the tail, while being heavier than certain whales. So obviously a chunkster, and even among mosasors, it was known for having strength to strangely massive jaws that were backed by absurdly powerful muscles and thick conical pocket knife-sized teeth, which had a mix of serrations and smooth surfaces. And so it's no shocker that this was a top predator who found a man's success in North America, Africa, Europe, and Australia throughout the late Cretaceous. And based on its teeth, the areas it lived in direct

predatory evidence, it is believed to been a hunter of virtually everything, with one specimen alone showing gut contents consisting of fish, cephalopods, and turtles. So when you combine this range, the aggressive nature of mosasors in general, what you get is the realization that others of their kind were fair game from time to time, meaning cannibals. An absolutely gruesome example of this was seen in the specimen dubbed NHMM 2012-072. Discovered in the Netherlands, this prehistoric trooper had a pretty obvious wound, and that was that its face was essentially missing. To be more specific, huge chunks of its upper jaw, cortical bone, and parts of its pre-maxilla,

had all been stripped away by something ridiculously powerful. And given the size of the actual victim, it's presumed that said something was another mosaeus. Perhaps even a fellow Pregnathodon is to blame, who was trying to cannibalize our protagonist. Now, close your eyes and take a second to imagine what it would be like to have your upper jaw straight up annihilated. And not only this, but to have this happen in the wild millions of years ago with no medical care. And just for the sake of imagination, you also have flippers instead of hands, so you can't even cover your fresh new gaping wound. Not super great chances, eh? And for most people, an obliterated jaw without serious medical intervention, or even with,

would likely be fatal. But for this Pregnathodon, it was just another Tuesday. And despite this heaping hole where its face should have been, the specimen seems to have survived for a long time, with it showing signs of healing both in the surrounding tissue and the actual bones. However, obviously the healing would have been excruciating. As between the blood loss, screaming nerve endings, and massive tissue trauma, the inflammation was so intense that it caused enough pressure to seize blood flow in certain areas. leading to sections of its face becoming essentially dead tissue.

And as if this wasn't enough, problems would also arise later on as bacteria seeped into this wound causing infection. And though the Pragnothodon had survived the actual physical wound for an extensive time, possibly even longer than a year, it seemed that the subsequent bacterial infection might have been its undoing. Not through any organ failure, mind you, but rather the predator reached a point where it could just no longer operate its jaws, or what was left of it, and thus slowly starved. But let me restate, it was actually fine without the jaws. relatively speaking. It was just the pesky bacteria that officially ruined the party down the road. So yeah, certified badass. But not every catastrophic injury eventually leads to this outcome.

Some animals recover near 100%, and perhaps none show as much durability as the king of prehistory itself, the Tyrannosaurus rex. Let me tell you, through the years, not one, but multiple specimens, have proven that this behemoth truly earned its title. And actually, it's some of the most famous specimens that you probably heard of that bear the most gruesome pathologies that we know. Take Stan, for example, a titan of a wrecks that was discovered in 1987, living 66 million years ago and was about 11.8 meters or 38.6 feet long. So, an absolute unit, and undoubtedly an apex predator. But as its skeleton so shows, being king was not easy, and Stan was riddled in numerous wounds and diseases. Off the bat, puncture marks were located in the back of the skull and ribs that were both

deep and wide. It only fit the description of one tooth that we know of, a tooth of another T-Rex, meaning Stan fought horrific battles against other tyrants and yet lived to tell the tale. And these weren't any love bites, being absolutely deep enough to cause horrific pain. And in the case of the skull bite, a nasty concussion at the very, very minimum, as it was bad enough to puncture his brain case. Yet, apparently for Stan, this was light work, and not even the worst of it. As a third bite to the base of his skull showed signs of having literally broken his neck. Now I think I need not tell you that a broken neck is typically fatal news. But for a T-Rex, I guess it's just an unpleasant nuisance, as it ended up healing over time.

Now, the healing was by no means perfect, as the damage caused growth of excess bone and the fusion of two vertebrae, leading to certain chronic discomfort and mobility issues for the rest of Stan's life, making its long-term survival just that much more amazing. And if this wasn't enough, bites to his cheeks, jaw, and fractured ribs from blunt trauma were all on the menu as well. Even the tiniest of nasties didn't leave Stan alone, with round holes to his face implying that bone-eating parasites became a daily part of his life at some point too. And so, all of this together is clearly a lot and no easy feat to survive. And yet, Stan managed to continue hunting and defending his territory, with the true insanity of all of this being that it wasn't these injuries that even eventually got him, rather old age, with his estimated age at death being about 24 years old, which is very respectable for a large theropod. However, he ain't the only wrecks to have gone through the ringer, and actually, the most famous one out there might have him beat, living far longer in spite of horrifying injuries.

And yes, I'm talking about good old Sue. If you like dinosaurs, you've heard of Sue. But what I bet you didn't hear of was that its life wasn't all glamorous either, despite being queen, or perhaps king. And throughout it, Sue endured what should have been career-ending injuries, so you could say. One such example was a badly damaged right shoulder blade that made the usage of the arm rather dubious, while the same limb, also suffered a torn tendon at some point. And it's thought that this injury was actually inflicted during a struggle with prey, which in the T-Rex's case

were also giants in their own right. And it seems that in the midst of battle, Sue also ended up not one, but three broken ribs. And yet, of course, in typical Sue fashion, or perhaps T-Rex fashion, she survived well past this incident, with signs of healing being very obvious. Then on top of violent injuries,

Sue also had to deal with multiple health ailments as well, most notably being that its left fibula was grossly enlarged, and she also had fused caudal vertebrae, both believed to been caused by different infections that sprung up. Its massive tail was also fused and badly damaged, attributed to arthritis due to repeated injuries, while signs of gout, a complex form of arthritis, also affected Sue as well. And just for that final cherry on top, Sue, like many T-Rexes, like Stan, had holes in the front of the skull. At first, these ones were thought to have come from a run-in with another Tyrannosaur,

or perhaps being due to a bacterial infection. Yet, after more analysis, the true answer became a bit more nauseating. which is that Sue likely had an infestation of parasites that burrowed into its jaw and feasted on the titanic skull. And so, with all of this pathology, it's pretty insane that Sue could survive, let alone thrive. But of course, Thrive Sue did. Reaching full maturity and achieving a massive size over 40 feet or 12.3 meters in length, while weighing up to 14 tons, making an African elephant seem like a freaking shrimp. And then a final middle finger to its injuries, Sue also ended up living for a very long time, relatively speaking.

only passing away at 33 years old, which makes Sue not only long-lived, but the longest-lived specimen ever recovered. Talk about an eventful life. But honestly, it wasn't just the kings and queens taking some heat, as there are a boatload of crazy dino injuries out there. And while I do want to come back to them, I wouldn't want us mammals feeling left out,

because we certainly dealt with some crazy BS too, including, by the way, pre-storic humans, who were obviously just built different. And if you've seen one of my older videos, you know that Neanderthals in particular could be quite the metal bunch, and perhaps no Neanderthal specimen proved this as much as Shanadar 1, lovingly nicknamed Nandy, who I personally think also goes down as the toughest fossilized hominin thus far. To set the stage a bit, Nandi was a roughly 45, to 65,000-year-old Neanderthal,

that lived in what is now Iraq, occupying a cave, and lived such an extremely harsh life that it was even immediately clear to excavators, who quickly noted his severely deformed skeleton. Now, violence wouldn't have been estranged to people back in those times, and it seems to have been responsible for at least a few of his ailments, including one of his prominent injuries that occurred early in life, a crushing blow to the head, possibly from a blunt force weapon. And let's just say this was no walked into a wall an accident kind of blow, but rather a major violent strike to the left side of his skull,

which not only shattered his left orbit, blinding him in his eye, but also left him with a permanent traumatic brain injury that caused various developmental issues and damaged the part of his brain responsible for controlling his right side. And this in turn might have led to some degree of paralysis, contributing to another major problem observed, his extremely shrunken, withered right arm and leg, that's also been blamed on a degenerative disease. And living like this certainly was not easy, as the withering of the limbs made him susceptible to even more accidents and injuries,

which was reflected by the deformed arms, which bore signs of having been fractured in not one, but several places, maybe from a fall, and thus further impairing his muscle functionality. And though he would recover from this, it does seem that the break directly or indirectly led to the loss of his lower arm. arm and hand, which were missing and might have been surgically amputated. So, we're not off to a nice start for Nandi, and sadly for him, we are still at the start, because the list of problems remains long. Moving downwards, we see on his legs that each was broken in either a single or separate events.

Now we don't have a clue as to what caused these breaks, yet they clearly made life just that much more painful for Nandi, and left him with a pronounced and bothersome lip, though it would only be worsened by an additional foot injury where he fractured his right metatarsal. So here the poor man is, limping around with brain damage can't see much. Oh, and he was pretty much deaf too, having exostosis, or lesions that completely blocked his right ear canal and partially close his left. And together, this all left him limited in many of the senses from which we derive pleasure, and not even his taste was left alone, in a sense. As to compensate for his limited arm functionality, Nandy apparently used his teeth a lot more as tools, in order to grip or tear items, resulting in them being seriously worn down, and causing sensitivity to cold and heat. heat, a poor bite, and certainly a painful jaw and headaches, making even eating an

unenjoyable event. So at this point, he really didn't need any more problems. But just to round it out, his body also shows signs of suffering from DISH, which stands for a diffuse idiopathic skeletal hyperostosis, and occurs when of normal calcification, or bone formations, grow in various parts of the body, leading to pain, stiffness, and further mobility issues. So all in all, it doesn't take a genius to figure out that Nandy should have died very early on. And yet, He didn't, despite the pedigree of his problems, which says two things. One, someone owed this guy at least a hundred drinks, and two, that he had some help, as there is no way that it is.

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Book on Hilton.com or the Hilton app and save up to 20% to get the stay you expected. When you want savings, not surprises. It matters where you stay. Hilton, for the stay. A neanderthal, or let alone Homo sapien, could have survived alone with such injuries. Injuries that made his day-to-day life excruciating

and would have prevented him from even completing simple tasks. And we do know that he actually didn't live alone, with a cave in which he was found containing at least 10 other individuals that presumably helped to care for him. And what this also shows, at least you could argue, is that his survival demonstrates a degree of empathy and love. Because as one paleontologists put it, Nandy would not have been able to offer anything meaningful to the others,

and thus was kept alive because they cared for who he was. And that Neanderthal health care sure turned out to be quite effective, as for Nandi defied the odds and lived until approximately 45 years old, making him an elder for the time. And in fact, the oldest specimen from the cave, which is truly impressive. And really, prehistoric humans, general are kind of known for being tough cookies. I mean, even large massacre sites show this.

As the seized individuals, typically it signs of surviving previous attacks, often shrugging off spear stabs, blows to the head with blunted weapons, and severe lacerations, which in some cases even took their limbs clean off. What's really interesting to me about the whole nandy situation is that researchers basically said, well, this proves cooperation because bro had no chance alone. And actually, the same logic has also been applied to another animal, in which socialness has often been a topic of debate. The Smilodon. Yep, just like the King of the Cretaceous, the King of the Ice Age could also have it rough. And no place shows this better than the Librea Tar Pits, a predator trap which to date has yielded over 8,000 cases of paleopathology.

Amongst them, you'll see bacterial infections, broken teeth from biting too heart, fractured bones, etc. But there is one specimen amongst the bunch that really sticks out, and is often considered the most striking example of this from the Labrea Tar Pits. LACMHC 131. This is actually Smilodon Fatalus discovered in the 1930s. That can be nicely summed up as misappened, with the right hip clearly being malformed in shape

and heavily destroyed, while the left side remained fairly normal, giving us a good contrast of just how banged up this pelvic bone really was. At first, it was believed that a traumatic injury had crippled the Smilodon in question. But after a recent scans of the bone, the cause was revised to a devastating birth effect,

where upon infancy, the pelvis started to remodel, and, uh, not done a good way. with a socket and ball joint being heavily impacted as well. And as one study described it, the joints were essentially obliterated. Overall, this was not good news for Diego. Albeit, it may not sound super fatal, seeing that in people today a broken pelvis, already formed one, is not necessarily life-threatening to an otherwise healthy individual. But the key difference here is that Smilodons just didn't have access to modern health care,

obviously. And their prey was pretty much exclusively giant megafaunal beasts like literal mammoths. Thus, the severely dysfunctional pelvis would be a literal death sentence, with it hampering the means of it grappling with large prey or chasing them down. On top of this, the inflicted Smalladon would have needed to sort out on how to defend territory and compete with other predators as well, both rather unlikely stories with barely functioning legs. And yet, despite these hurdles, the specimen clearly ended up living into adulthood, something deemed impossible for it to do if the Smalodon truly was a lone predator. And thus, some have referenced the specimen as strong evidence of gregarious behavior.

in saber-toothed cats, with a proposed idea being that its familial unit would share its meal and take care of defending territory. As like Nandy, this specimen would not be able to participate in many activities, even if it could somehow get over the functionality problems, as the banged up pelvis also likely resulted in chronic debilitating pain. So yes, we mammals have suffered our fair share. But I do want to bounce back to dinosaurs again, because I can't lie, they've got some even crazier stories. Remember the prognathodon from earlier, who got his face snatched? Well, there's a dinosaur that got his or her head snatched, and yet lived to tell the tale. This story begins 67 million years ago in the Hell Creek region, and evolved an adult at Montosaurus anectins,

a species of hadrosaur, who were often slept on, but definitely shouldn't be, because the adults were massive giants, with individuals routinely rivaling the sizes of elephants. And they were certainly a hearty lot, demonstrated by a specimen in question who came in the form of a skull, or should I say, part of a skull. as overall a huge chunk of it was just gone. To be precise, a section of its right brain case had violently been removed, with large drag marks around the wound, implying that a powerful bone-crushing bite was to blame. And the affected area wasn't just wide, but deep as well, exposing parts of the soft tissue underneath.

So I guess you could say you really could have dove into the mind of this dinosaur. Jokes aside, catastrophic injuries putting it lightly, and it was probably even worse than simple bone removal, as along with the skull they found a patch of essentially fossilized skin and meat that came by the way from above the victim's right eye and it was seemingly stripped clean off with the eye possibly being removed as well and so another way to think about this is that this guy got hit so hard by something that his bone left its body and then took a bunch of meat and skin with it yeah a little bit nasty and this all begs the question of what could really do something so devastating to an elephant-sized behemoth in hell creek in the first place and ah there's really only one hand A Tyrannosaurus straight up bit its face. Now, getting headshot by a T-Rex surely is not fun, and usually fatal, yet somehow it wasn't, in this case, as the Edmontosaurus showed clear signs of bone growth at healing, indicating it was an actual case of failed predation in the late Cretaceous.

Spied again the fact that its head was, you know, nearly ripped off. So yeah, unsurprisingly, this specimen probably takes the cake for dinosaurs when it comes to surviving singular injuries. Yet, I can't talk about pathology in dynos without mentioning the watchings. not mentioning the walking triage unit, Big Al. I sincerely hope you've heard this name before. But in case you haven't, it is just about the most well-known Allosaurus out there. And while it's famous come from Al being 95% complete, he or she is also fairly well known for being extremely banged up.

And that almost seems like Mother Nature had a Jurassic hit out on Al. As through its life, the Alessaurus endured a whopping 19 different major injuries that covered large parts of the body. This included multiple rib fractures and brakes, a ripped right hand, a punctured hole to its shoulder, numerous infections, including in the jaw, by the way, fused vertebrae from traumatic collisions, a broken tail, and a damaged gastralia, which are bones that support the abdomen. So lots of tummy aches for Al. It's believed that many of these ailments

came from falls or scraps with prey, and possibly competition, and shows us just how much of an act of life Alosaurus's head, plus how hardcore they could be, as none of the injuries I mentioned actually killed him. But that said, one finally did. The night. which came in the form of a badly broken left foot. They likely happened again during another hunting accident. Now, the broken bones themselves would have limited Al, but the true problems kicked in when the wound became severely infected. Infected to the point the bone essentially started to rot,

making walking exceedingly hard, if possible at all. And Big Al presumably eventually starved from this because it was unable to hunt. And what's quite ironic about all of this is that years after Al's discovery, a second well-preserved allsaurus was also discovered, who was subsequently then named after it. And thus we got Big Al 2. And it coincidentally turns out that it too, pun intended, was riddled in injuries, as showcased by this diagram.

Similar to Al Numero Uno is thought that this specimen earned its scars in battle via scraps of prey and foe alike, with some damage to its face even being attributed to facial biting from fellow allosaurus. The big difference with it, though, is that unlike the original, Mr. 2 suffered a major foot injury as well, yet survived that ordeal and reached full maturity, as opposed to Al 1, who died as a sub-adult. Yet, fate would catch up with number two regardless, as in adulthood it suffered a severe fracture to its ischium, a bone that supported the pelvis and numerous muscles, and from this, it never recovered. But how this happened is a complete mystery, especially when considering that this kind of break is almost never seen in large therapods.

So pretty odd. Now, I could go on and on about dinosaur pathology, but there is one more interesting non-dino that I want to end with. As stated with the first big owl, its death apparently came from a single foot injury, and no doubt have you found your first. yourself limited to just one leg, you'd be in for some trouble, and if both legs were out of order, well, good luck. But then let's say, just for laughs and giggles, your arms were incapacitated too, which in this case, there really aim much you can do. Well, I guess that only applies if you're a human, that is, apparently. Since in 1948, paleontologists stumbled upon a specimen that defied those odds, a one-of-a-kind, Smilisukas. When first discovered, it wasn't its pathologies that gripped the attention

of the team, but the size and preservation of the animal in question, which was a giant triassic-dated that could even rival the megacrocks seen in the Jurassic in Cretaceous, with adults measuring up to 12 meters or 39 feet long. And being a phytosaur of this size meant that this specimen would have been one robust mean killing machine. If, and big if, it hadn't been for some pretty limiting injuries. Across its titanic body, the team found not one, but eight bones in bad shape that were covered in extensive exostosis, which if, if you were not in the same, it was in the same thing.

which, if you recall, are bony grose that can occur after direct trauma, highlighting that this phytosaur endured some breaks and fractures, which then became infected. But that's not too crazy compared to the other examples just yet. But what was highly odd and unfortunate for the phytosaur was that all eight of the afflicted bones were concentrated to the limbs, and literally all four of them, with not a single one being spared,

with its left humorous right ulna, and then both of its femora and fibula bearing damage, plus at least two metapodials. Now, it will be almost impossible to ever say just how exactly this phytosaur ended up with such varying pathologies, but endrospecific competition has loosely been cited before, and we do see that in some modern reptiles, limb biting is not unheard of. However, with this said, you would expect something that's big biting another one's limb to result in amputations, not just broken bones.

But because phytosaurs were much more extensively armored than even modern crocodiles, it is possible that blunt damage from bites was an actual possibility. And one aspect that clearly supports this is that it would have been virtually impossible for this specimen to have received all of its injuries in just one event, with the spread nature just being too coincidental. Therefore, we can just say that it simply suffered from exceptionally bad odds, and these poor odds were only exacerbated by the time the phytis were lived in, the late Triassic, a brutal era with arid conditions, significant droughts in the area it resided, and numerous competing predators.

However, the fact that it didn't die from one messed-up limb, let alone four, is a prehistoric. miracle and not only did it survive in the state for a few days or something but at the very least several painful months and that's only after receiving its final wound in other words it could have been living with two or even three injured limbs for years prior likely benefiting in some sense from its semi-aquatic lifestyle and the team also reckoned it benefited from the lower metabolic rates seen in phytosaurs which allowed it to live far longer than you'd expect a mammal to if they were not able to easily get food yet advantages aside this individual is still an absolute unit to keep chugging along with all the injuries that are racked up.

And in fact, it's commonly touted as being the most pathological specimen from the entire Triassic period, an achievement which I can't say I'm particularly jealous of, improving just once more how absurdly resilient prehistoric animals were. Thanks for watching, until next time, on Extinct Zoo.