8 Prehistoric Creatures Ripped Directly from Your Nightmares

#4. The Sea Monsters That Ate the Other Sea Monsters That Ate Sea Monsters

It's like a Russian doll with teeth.

If there is one thing you take away from your time on Cracked, let it be this: No matter how terrified you are of the sea, you aren't terrified enough. Kronosaurus and Liopleurodon embody everything that could possibly be frightening about the ocean (well, except for maybe tentacles, but that's likely only because they thought tentacles were delicious).

Human toes taste a bit like tentacles.

Liopleurodon looked like a rough draft of a crocodile rejected by God with a note to "Tone it way, way down, man." It regularly reached 33 feet long, with one specimen discovered that had a jawbone 10 feet long. Given the proportions of some of the more complete remains found, some scientists speculate that Liopleurodon actually grew up to 50 feet long. Much like the Tylosaurus, the only prey big enough to quell the mighty hunger of Liopleurodon was other crazy, huge monsters, seen here in BBC's insane artistic rendering:

Behold the mighty allosaur ... oh, uh, never mind.

Speaking of the living avatars of fear on Earth, let's talk about the Kronosaurus, which was likely even bigger than Liopleurodon. Kronosaurus was named after the Titan Kronos, who was such a grand, evil bastard that he ate his own children (who were already pretty giant and terrifying themselves). This image sums up the reasoning behind the name pretty well:

"You'll never get your fins on my inheritance!"

Kronosaurs had large "banana-shaped" teeth and thick jaws designed to crush the shells of ammonites, which were ancient shelled squids from back before nature decided that armoring the Kraken was "perhaps a bit overkill."

Oh hey, there's Suicidal Size-Comparison Alan. Hello, Alan!

#3. T. Rex: The Xtreme Editions

That little dinosaur is holding a chair and whip off screen.

Coming face-to-face with a T. rex would be a bad day for anyone. The only thing worse would be somehow surviving that encounter only to find out he's got a pissed-off big brother waiting around the corner. But don't freak out, the T. rex doesn't have a more terrifying ancestor.

It has two: Gigonotosaurus and Carcharodontosaurus.

Both lived about 100 million years ago, were roughly 45 feet long and made the T. rex look like the neurotic, asthmatic nerd of the Rex family. The Carcharodontosaurus is pictured above, and is considered to be the second largest land predator in history (that's called foreshadowing, friends). While Gigonotosaurus lived in South America and looked like this:

Seen here sporting what we're going to call a "slaughter bulge."

#2. The Gargantuan Buck-Toothed Fang Fish

We're gonna need some bigger fries to eat with that thing.

There's a unique subgenre of terror that's actually augmented by a bit of goofiness. It's like spotting a clown holding a carving knife: Somehow the big floppy shoes make him so much worse than a normal knife-wielding maniac. So it is with the Dunkleosteus, a 30-foot murder-fish bred with a tank and armed with giant, buck-toothed blades all up in its face.

Oh hey, there's Alan again. He's not too bright.

We're not embellishing a harmless thing because it looks scary: The Dunkleosteus is estimated to have possessed the strongest bite out of anything. Ever. For some perspective, one of the strongest bites on Earth today comes from the hyena, at 2,000 Newtons (about 500 pounds of force). They easily crack bones with their mouths. The T. rex is estimated to have had a bite around 13,000 Newtons (3,000 pounds of force), which, once you realize bones crack at 1/6 that force, just seems like spite.

The Dunkleosteus had around 150 million Pascals of bite force, roughly 22,000 pounds of force per square inch. That is so powerful they changed units of measurement just to calculate it. If you came across a Dunkleosteus while exploring the ocean in the world's most well-armored time-traveling submarine, Dunkleosteus would not only still eat you, but complain that, if anything, you were a bit soggy.

University of Texas
That guy's got bits of a blue police box stuck in his teeth.

Dunkleosteus could also open its mouth in a 50th of a second, meaning that it vacuumed in animals that would normally be fast enough to swim away from it. Usually, fish either have a fast bite or a powerful one, because you can get plenty of food with only one of the two. But Dunkleosteus had both, because evolution is a spiteful bitch that hates life like they used to date and life banged its sister the night before the wedding.

#1. The Largest Land Predator Ever

Or the dinosaur that made Jurassic Park III bearable.

Hey, remember that foreshadowing from earlier? Here's the thing casting that unusually large, spiky, quickly approaching shadow.

That's a Spinosaurus, and it grew up to 60 feet long. Its "crocodile-like" jaws easily reached 5 feet in length alone, and it sported a jaunty sail on its back, because who was going to say anything about it?

"Ha, I know, right! And what was with that goofy sail thi ... iii ... it's right behind me, isn't it?"

Believed to be the largest predator ever to walk the Earth, Spinosaurus is, at least for now, the King Scary Bastard in an entire epoch of the scariest bastards in history. Here's the mouth of one of Spinosaurus' smaller, gentler cousins, Suchomimus:

Nope nope nope nope.

Jesus, is that a skull or industrial logging equipment? That's it: We're starting a collection to distribute cyanide pills to toddlers, females and Internet comedians. Because if Jurassic Park ever comes to life and gets a hold of any of these things, humanity's best option is to just get the hell out of this whole "nature" thing altogether, and brother, we're calling it now -- it is women, children and Cracked writers first.

David leaves a trail of science across the Internet, and it collects at Zombie Chops, SciTechGadget and Revmodo, but you can also follow him on Twitter.

For more reasons that Mother Nature has always hated humanity, check out 7 Terrifying Prehistoric Creatures (That Are Still Around) and 7 Terrifying Giant Versions of Disgusting Critters.

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