Originating from Japanese monster movies like Godzilla, the word “kaiju” is now often used to refer to giant creatures in general – and so it was only a matter of time before a huge sauropod dinosaur was named after the concept.
Kaijutitan maui* was a titanosaur living in Argentina during the Late Cretaceous, about 89-86 million years ago. It’s only known from fragmentary remains, so its full size is difficult to estimate, but it was probably somewhere in the region of 20m long (66′). Nowhere close to the largestsauropod, but possibly one of the heaviest since it does seem to have been rather chunkily built, with stout limbs and an estimated weight of 40-60 tonnes (44-66 US tons).
* Not named for the Polynesian hero, apparently, but for the initials of the Museo Argentino Urquiza.
The modern sperm whale is already an impressive animal, being by far the largest of the living toothed whales and famous for its ability to dive over 2km down (1.2 miles) to feed on deep-sea animals like giant squid.
But some of its ancient relatives were terrifying.
Livyatan melvillei here has an appropriately monstrous name, inspired by both the Hebrew name for the Leviathan and Herman Melville, the author of Moby-Dick. Known from the Pacific coast of South America during the late Miocene, around 10-9 million years ago, it’s estimated to have measured somewhere between 13.5m and 17.5m long (~44′-57′) – comparable in size to an adult male sperm whale.
Unlike the relatively slender mouth of its modern cousin, however, it instead had thick strong jaws full of enormous teeth.
It was part of a loose grouping of what are known as “macroraptorial sperm whales“, which all had similarly toothy jaws and occupied the same sort of ecological niche as modern orcas, specializing in hunting prey like large fish, squid, seals, and other whales.
Livyatan‘s main food source was probably smaller baleen whales about half its own size, and its only real competition for this prey was the equally huge megalodon shark that shared the same waters.
A huge fossil tooth found in Australia suggests that Livyatan or a very close relative of it survived at least into the early Pliocene, about 5 million years ago. Around this time a cooling climate and dwindling numbers of its preferred prey would have eventually made a population of such enormous apex predators unsustainable, and driven this “killer sperm whale” into extinction – probably around the same time megalodon disappeared, about 3.6 million years ago.
Bothremydids were an extinct group of side-necked turtles that existed from the late Cretaceous to the early Miocene, between about 100 and 20 million years ago. Found across most of the world (with the exception of Antarctica and Australia) they were a diverse group occupying a range of ecological niches, inhabiting both freshwater and near-shore marine habitats.
Although their fossils are mainly just fragmentary remains like pieces of shell, Chupacabrachelys complexus here is actually known from a fairly complete skeleton.
Living in what is now western Texas, USA, during the late Cretaceous (~75 mya), it was an average-sized member of the group at around 1m long (3’3″) and was probably marine, swimming around in the shallow tropical waters of the Western Interior Seaway.
It had a particularly unusual skull for a turtle, narrow and triangular and slightly flattened, with elongated eye sockets. The paleontologists who described Chupacabrachelys thought the overall shape was vaguely reminiscent of a canid, and so that ended up inspiring its name — a reference to the mangy coyotes that are occasionally mistaken for the mythical chupacabra.
So it’s not really surprising that one of them has been named Sollasina cthulhu.
But unlike its namesake this “monster” was actually tiny, only 3cm across (1.2″). It was discovered in the fine-grained Wenlock limestones of the UK, and dates to the late Silurian, about 430 million years ago. Its exceptionally well-preserved state makes it the first ophiocistioid with known fossilized internal structures, including evidence of its water vascular system.
Unfortunately this high level of detail comes at a cost — the tiny Wenlock fossils are preserved in three dimensions inside hard concretions and are almost impossible to extract or interpret from split-open cross-sections, and highly expensive CT scans don’t give a good enough resolution. So the only way to actually “see” them is to destroy them, grinding away a tiny layer at a time and taking a photograph at each step, then assembling a digital reconstruction from the hundreds of slices.
Named after Erlik, the Turko-Mongolian god of death, it’s only known from partial remains – but it was the first therizinosaur ever found with a preserved skull, helping to fill in some of our knowledge of these oddball dinosaurs’ anatomy.
It was closely related to Therizinosaurus, but was only about half the size, estimated to have measured around 4-5m long (13′-16’4″). It would have had a toothless beak at the front of its jaws, an adaption for a herbivorous diet, along with long claws on its hands and a coat of fluffy down-like feathers. I’ve also given it some longer quill-like feathers here, similar to those known in Beipiaosaurus.
Named after the monster Grendel from the epic poem Beowulf, this 4m long (~13′) marine reptile had a big robust skull with large teeth, proportionally short flippers, and smaller eyes than some of its other relatives. It also had an unusual bony “hump” on its snout above its nostrils.
(About 20 years ago Grendelius was reassigned into Brachypterygius on the basis of the two not being distinct enough from each other to justify having separate genus names – but a more recent study suggests that that they actually were different after all, and the name may be valid again.)
Diplacodon gigan, a brontothere from the Early Eocene of Wyoming, USA (~46-42 mya). Standing around 2.1m tall at the shoulder (~7′) it was named after the kaiju Gigan for its relatively large size – not quite as big as some later brontotheres, but still about 20% larger than other known species of Diplacodon.
It had a pair of blunt bony projections on its snout which would have been covered with skin in life, similar to the ossicones of modern giraffids, with males having larger “horns” than females.
Despite looking very similar to rhinos, brontotheres were actually much more closely related to horses, with the resemblance being a result of convergent evolution for the same sort of big-tanky-herbivore ecological niche.
Vaderlimulus tricki, a horseshoe crab from the Early Triassic of Idaho, USA (~251-247 mya). Named for its resemblance to the shape of Darth Vader’s helmet, it’s the earliest known Mesozoic horseshoe crab from North America and was closely related to another oddly-shaped form from Australia.
It was much smaller than its modern relatives, only about 10cm long (4″), and probably lived in a brackishestuary environment where seawater and freshwater met.
Linguamyrmex vladi, an ant from the Late Cretaceous of Myanmar (~99 mya). Part of an extinct group known as the Haidomyrmecini, or “hell ants”, it measured about 5mm long (0.2″) and is known from several individuals in amber.
It had huge scythe-shaped mandibles and a horn-like appendage on its head which together formed a powerful trap-jaw mechanism, snapping vertically shut when a pair of long sensitive trigger hairs touched against a target. One specimen was preserved close to a large soft-bodied beetle larva, which may have been an intended prey item.
When closed, the mandibles formed a tube-like channel to Linguamyrmex’s mouth, allowing it to suck out the “blood” from its impaled victims – and inspiring its species name, referencing Vlad Dracula.
The horn was also reinforced with metal particles in the chitinous exoskeleton, strengthening it against the impact of its closing jaws.
Gamerabaena sonsalla, a baenid freshwater turtle that lived at the very end of the Cretaceous (~66 mya) in North Dakota, USA. Known only from a single skull, its full size is uncertain, but it may have reached lengths of around 50cm (1′7″).
Its genus name was inspired by Gamera, a fictional giant turtle from a series of Japanese kaiju movies.
Baenids first appeared in the mid-Cretaceous (~112 mya) – although their ancestry may go as far back as the Late Jurassic (~150 mya) – and were part of an early lineage of the cryptodiran turtles, the grouping which includes most freshwater turtles and terrapins, all terrestrial tortoises, and all sea turtles. However, unlike many of the their modern cousins, they weren’t capable of fully retracting their heads inside their shells.
They survived well through the K-Pg mass extinction, with several species found on both sides of the boundary, but eventually went extinct in the mid-Eocene (~42 mya).
