![]() ![]() Previously, during the Mesozoic era (252 million to 66 million years ago), mammals living in the shadow of dinosaurs were typically no bigger than a badger. That modest size wasn’t unusual for mammals at the time. The earliest known brontotheres appeared about 53 million years ago they were hornless and about the size of a coyote, weighing around 40 pounds (18 kilograms), the scientists reported. The name Brontotherium - “thunder beast,” coined in the 19th century by paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh - was inspired by Lakota oral histories about violent thunderstorms accompanied by giants, the park service says.Īsteroid that wiped out the dinosaurs also triggered a global tsunami Most brontothere species weighed over 2,200 pounds (1,000 kilograms), and the biggest lived in the South Dakota Badlands, measuring about 8 feet (2.4 meters) tall and 16 feet (4.9 meters) long, with giant Y-shaped horns on their noses, according to the National Park Service. ![]() They might have produced species that were even more massive, had they not all gone extinct due to environmental changes, scientists reported Thursday in the journal Science.īrontotheres are relatives of modern rhinos, horses and tapirs. In fact, brontotheres likely hadn’t reached the limits of how big they could get. Brontotheres started out as dog-size animals, but then most species evolved to become nearly as large as elephants, and they did so relatively quickly because smaller species were outcompeted into extinction, researchers recently discovered. That certainly was true for brontotheres, the enormous, rhino-like herbivorous mammals that lumbered across North America and Asia during the Eocene Epoch.
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