Prehistoric Facts

Titanoboa was the largest snake that ever lived, measuring in at 13-15 meters in length and weighing about 2,500 lbs.

Helicoprion was a shark-like fish that lived 270 million years ago. It grew up to 4-8 meters long and had a bizarre spiral whorl of teeth on its lower jaw, unlike anything seen in modern animals.

About 60 million years ago, a species of turtle called Carbonemys cofrinii was so large and had such powerful jaws that it could have devoured crocodiles.

Megalodon was the biggest shark that ever existed. It was larger than the average city bus and could bite down with a force between 10.8 and 18.2 tons - enough to crush a prehistoric whale's skull as easily as a grape.

Early American humans hunted car-sized armadillos called glyptodonts and used their massive shells as shelters.

Sifrhippus was a species of horse about the size of a house cat, weighing only 8.5 pounds, and roamed North America around 56 million years ago during the Eocene epoch.

Dire wolves actually existed, living up to 10,000 years ago before going extinct.

Hikers called the cops when they found a body melting out of an Alpine glacier in 1991. Police treated it as a routine mountain casualty. Carbon dating later revealed the man had been dead for 5,300 years. A decade later, X-rays found an arrowhead in his shoulder - he had bled to death in minutes.

Stonehenge's central slab is the Altar Stone - a 6-tonne sandstone block. Scientists believed for a century it came from Wales. A study in Nature matched its mineral fingerprint to northeast Scotland, over 750 km away. That is the longest recorded stone haul of the Neolithic era. How Neolithic people moved it there remains unsolved - possibly by sea.

Göbekli Tepe in Turkey is the oldest known temple on Earth. Its massive stone pillars date back roughly 11,600 years, about 6,000 years before Stonehenge was built. Hunter-gatherers built it before writing, metal tools, or farming even existed. Then they deliberately buried the enclosures, and nobody knows exactly why.

Marcel Ravidat was 18 when his dog went down a hole near Montignac, France. He climbed in after it, then returned days later with three friends. They found cave walls covered in painted animals: over 600 images made some 17,000 years ago. One black bull stretches over 17 feet across the rock. Visitors' breath damaged the paintings so badly the cave closed in 1963. A replica nearby lets people see it today.