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We know that humans reached North America between 40000 and 16000 years ago...and that's about all we know for certain. Anything in American prehistory before about 10000 years ago remains deeply controversial. But some mastodon bones found in the 1970s recently revealed major clues. More »
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Sixty million years ago, the world belonged to Titanoboa, a gigantic snake that measured 40 to 50 feet long and weighed over 2,500 pounds. Only one creature could challenge it: a newly discovered, twenty-foot freshwater crocodile. More »
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The most recent ice age was dominated by gigantic mammals like the mammoth, woolly rhinoceros, and saber-tooth cat. But there's an evolutionary mystery here. How did these animals enter the ice age already perfectly adapted for such brutally cold climates? More »
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This pleasant-looking fellow is diprotodon optatum, a giant marsupial that lived in Australia for millions of years. We've now discovered the first complete skeleton of this marsupial, proving the only things more bizarre than Australian animals are ancient Australian animals. More »
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The sadly out-of-print Weird War Tales furnished readers with oodles of nutty paranormal combat stories. In this obscure yet awesome short, a Nazi regiment fights a woolly mammoth thawed out of glacier...and then they tame it. Hilarity ensues. More »
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Giant insects are stalwart monsters in science fiction, and million of years ago, arthropods grew to Brobdingnagian sizes. But why aren't ants the size of rats disrupting our picnics today? More »
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These 100,000-year-old footprints were left by a giant wombat, one species of megafauna among many that once roamed Australia. Now artists have created portraits of these lost megafauna for National Geographic, and you can see some below. More »
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This is perhaps the oldest painting on the continent of Australia. It depicts the Genyornis, a giant bird that went extinct 40,000 years ago. And it's one of the only snapshots we have of the ancient creature. More »
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When humans migrated to the Americas roughly 13 thousand years ago, they hunted megafauna like mammoths to extinction. The result? Scientists say that without giant animal farts, there was a massive depletion in atmospheric methane, possibly causing an ice age. More »
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BoingBoing points out the similarities between cylon ships and these giant manta rays featured in the latest National Geographic magazine. These 2,000-pound creatures are on a krill feeding frenzy. More pictures via NatGeo, thanks to Marilyn Terrell! More »
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