5 Most Terrifying Prehistoric Species That Hunted Our Human Ancestors

To discuss terrifying prehistoric animals, you might first think of the Tyrannosaurus Rex. Thanks to Spielberg, we've successfully forgotten the pain of blood and genes lingering within our prehistoric ancestors, experiencing the pain and hardship of survival. In fact, over the tens of thousands of years of human existence, at least 5 species of ferocious prehistoric beasts fed on humans and other primates.

Crocuta

Crocuta (Dinofelis) lived 5 million to 1.2 million years ago, with a body size roughly similar to that of a leopard or lion today. According to fossil evidence, Crocuta possessed powerful skulls that could crush the skulls of early humans, specializing in hunting primate species, including our early, relatively weak ancestors, such as Homo habilis and Homo erectus, as well as young mammoth and mueller mammoth. Thinking about that time, how helpless our ancestors must have been – it's truly chilling, and yet we still exist today, which is a grueling and coincidental result.

Gigantopithecus

Almost everyone has heard of the spotted hyena, the most disgusting animal on the African savanna, accustomed to using butt-biting tactics, letting other animals die even when they were still alive. Even the lion, the king of beasts, would sit on the ground and rely on the earth mother to protect its anus when it saw a spotted hyena.

You might think that spotted hyenas are a very dangerous existence for humans, but spotted hyenas may be modest, modest, let us introduce you to our prehistoric relatives – Gigantopithecus. Basically, if you enlarge the spotted hyena to the size of a female lion, you will get a Gigantopithecus. This creature lived 3 million to 400,000 years ago in the late MIS and middle Pleistocene, with powerful jaws that could crush human skulls. Scientists have discovered bite marks on human skulls in Eurasia and Africa, dating back to Gigantopithecus.

Arctodus

If Crocuta made you scared, then encountering short-faced bears would surely make our ancestors collapse. This bear lived from 1.8 million to 110,000 years ago, standing up to a maximum of 3.7 meters, lying down with four limbs measuring 1.8 meters, and weighing up to 1.2 tons, one of the largest terrestrial mammals, and like polar bears, it may have been mainly carnivorous.

Arctodus

Arctodus is not only large in size, but its running speed can reach 50 to 70 km/h, which is faster than Bolt's 36 km/h, and a little more than 100 meters, which is very good. This also made it a ruthless killer in prehistoric times, even adult wild boars were its meals, let alone our diminutive prehistoric ancestors.

Harpy Eagle

Our prehistoric ancestors lived a very difficult life, not only to withstand the attacks of land 'soldier' species, but sometimes they encountered precise 'air strikes'. This is the largest falcon species that ever existed on Earth – Harpy Eagle. Harpy Eagles weighed 10 to 15 kg, with a wingspan of up to 3 meters, and weighed up to 250 kg like giant birds that didn't fly. It grasped the pelvic bones of the giant birds with sharp claws, attacked their heads and necks, and killed them, then slowly consumed them.

However, as humans came, giant eagles turned into human's easy delicacies, and were hunted in large numbers. Harpy Eagles couldn't fill their stomachs, so they turned to another food source – the children and even adults of Maori.

Homo Terrible

Although we are now close to crocodiles, most of the time we only need to touch our shoes, belts or bags to gain great satisfaction, especially Louis Vuitton and so on. But for our distant ancestors, getting close to crocodiles was not a good thing, it was something they should desperately avoid in their lifetime, especially Homo Terrible.

Homo Terrible

Homo Terrible, also known as the Lubod River crocodile, lived 400-200,000 years ago in Kenya, with a body length of more than 8.2 meters, which was 2 meters longer than the largest crocodile currently alive, the Nile crocodile. According to fossil evidence, this crocodile did hunt our distant ancestors in prehistoric times. It's easy to understand that prehistoric humans' habitats coincided closely with theirs, and humans needed to drink by the river, almost certainly, our small bodies would be swallowed by it accidentally.

You might find it hard to imagine that our distant ancestors were no match for these terrifying wild beasts, and they are either extinct or completely exterminated by humans. Humans may not have advantages in terms of size and strength, but we are the undisputed kings, unique without competitors, we have used sharp tools and clever tactics to defeat these so-called ferocious beasts and birds. This asymmetric battle ended with our ancestors' complete victory – if not, there would be no species flipping bones and fossils in caves and layers to infer the evolutionary history of life on this planet.

We say that these large animals or ferocious birds and eagles may not have been completely extinct by prehistoric humans, not entirely because of lack of evidence, but because we 'feel' that there is lack of evidence – when we claim to be a civilized species, we don't want to hear that some creatures have been written into the extinction list by us.