Nationalgeographic.co.id—With ecosystems as diverse as oceans, plains and frozen tundra, America The north is home to several predators giant in ganas.
However, modern creatures — like crocodiles, shark big white, and bear the poles —would look very small when placed next to the continent’s ancient predators. So, what is the biggest predator that ever lived in America North?
For furry animals, the largest predatory mammal in the world America North most likely is bear short -faced (we are Arctic), say Ross MacPhee, senior curator of mammals at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City.
sometimes called “bear bulldog,” this now extinct creature had a distinctive short, broad snout. It stood about 1.6 meters at the shoulders and more than 3.4 meters in its bony hind legs, according to researchers at the University of Iowa Museum of Natural History.
“It can be difficult for scientists to measure the exact weights of extinct species, because they have to estimate those numbers using existing species as benchmarks,” MacPhee said. Live science.
However, paleontologists estimate that the short-faced bear may have weighed about 700 kilograms. Modern polar bear (Ursus maritimus) measures not too far apart—the largest males measure about 1.5 meters at the shoulder and weigh about 600 kilograms, according to Polar Bears International.
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Livescience
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Twelve feet tall at the hip and as long as a school bus, T. rex towered over most other carnivores.
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Short-faced bears went extinct about 11,000 years ago, around the end of the last ice age. To find larger land predators, we must travel further back in time. North America’s largest predatory dinosaur is also the continent’s most famous: Tyrannosaurus rex.
During the late Cretaceous period, about 100 million to 66 million years ago, North America was a land of monsters.
“Carnivorous dinosaurs had tremendous diversity in North America throughout the Mesozoic (252 million to 66 million years ago),” Andrew Farke, director of the Raymond M. Alf Museum of Paleontology in Claremont, California Live Science.
But at nearly 3.5 meters high at the hips and up to 12.3 meters long, according to a nearly complete school bus-sized specimen of T. rex known as Stan, the tyrant rex towered over most of its carnivorous contemporaries.
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Acrocanthosaurus was a “toothed shark” cousin to tyrannosaurs and a member of the group known as carcharodontosaurus. It is almost as long as T. rex but weighs less than T. rex. Acrocanthosaurus weighed 6.8 tons while T. rex weighed 7.8 tons, according to the American Museum of Natural History.
T. rex uses all of that to its advantage: With its powerful jaw muscles, it can generate up to 6 tons of pressure per bite—enough to tear steel like a sheet of paper, according to a study in the journal. The Anatomical Record in 2019.
The only dinosaurs alive today are birds, making the largest living dinosaur in North America the California condor (Gymnogyps californianus). At 3 meters from wingtip to wingtip, this bird was significantly smaller than its ancient flesh-eating cousin T. rex, but still tough. These animals eat the carcasses of deer, pigs, cattle, sea lions and even whales, according to the Cornell Lab of Ornithology.
When it comes to ancient sea giants, giant reptiles are the winners.
Ichthyosaurs were a group of predatory marine reptiles that lived during the Mesozoic era, the same time period as the dinosaurs. In the Late Triassic period, about 237 million years ago, an ichthyosaur known as Shonisaurus ikanniensis began swimming in the waters of what is now British Columbia, Canada.
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LiveScience
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Shonisaurus sikanniensis was 65 feet long, three times as long as the largest great white shark.
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“S. ikanniensis is considered the largest marine reptile of all time,” said Kenshu Shimada, a professor of paleobiology at De Paul University in Chicago.
“There is some debate about the Ichthyosaurus genus S. ikanniensis, a large, efficient and fast second member of the generation, although species of the genus Shonisaurus had barrel chests and longer snouts than Shastasaurus,” according to Mark Witton of the University of Portsmouth paleontologist and paleoartist.
Regardless of taxonomy, there is no doubt that S. ikanniensis is truly colossal; an astonishing 65 ft (20 m) from snout to tail,
“In short, about three times the size of the largest known living great white shark,” said Shimada. But size doesn’t always equal ferocity. A 2011 study in the journal PLOS One suggest that S. ikanniensis may have been suckers, slurping on soft-bodied prey such as squid and belemnites (shelled squid).
Each of these creatures, however, eventually died as a result of environmental upheaval. Like many highly specialized predators, once their prey becomes scarce, they cannot meet their energy needs. “At some point, bigger isn’t better,” says MacPhee.
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