Школа английского языка (School of English)The scariest animals in history
Terror Bird
About 60 million years ago, huge birds lived in South America. They didn’t fly, but they ran faster than a horse! Scientists call them ‘terror birds’, because they were very fierce hunters. They caught and killed animals with their beaks. The largest were more than three meters tall. These birds all died out about 2 million years ago. Their only modern relatives are also fierce hunters, but they are much smaller — only about 80 cm tall.
Supercroc
Crocodiles are the largest reptiles in the world today — and perhaps, the scariest too.
Some are 5 meters long and weigh about 1, 000 kg. But between 100 million and 90 million years ago, a different kind of crocodile existed — and it was much bigger! It was 12 meters long and weighed about 8, 000 kg. That’s longer and heavier than a bus! Scientists called it ‘supercroc’, when they found the fossils in the Sahara Desert in Africa. The supercroc lived in rivers — the Sahara was not a desert at that time. It caught other animals with its mouth and pulled them into water. There, it used its 132 teeth to kill and eat them.
Megalodon
Perhaps the scariest of all the ancient animals was the megalodon. It looked like a shark, but it was bigger. The largest shark today is the whale shark, and it’s about 12 meters long.
Scientists believe that megalodon was about 20 meters long. Its mouth was big enough to eat a rhino, but the megalodon hunted other large sea creatures, like whales. They first appeared 25 million years ago; they were the fiercest hunters in the ocean. Luckily for swimmers and surfers, the megalodon died out two million years ago.