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if you condense the history of life into a single 24-hour day then modern humans AKA Homo sapiens appeared less than 8 seconds ago in other words we ain't that old and yet in those few seconds which represent our roughly 350,000 years of existence the Earth has changed in some ways not a lot but in other ways an impressive amount and if You Were Somehow sent back to when humans first appeared you'd see a lot of strange stuff but what exactly would you see at the time homo sapiens were restricted to Continental Africa and stayed there for quite some time not budging all that much until anatomically modern people finally dispersed about 70,000 or so years ago or at least that's the dispersal whose descendants survived to populate the world during this long period of hunkering down within Africa our ancestors would have encountered a myriad of different biomes and more importantly animals that sadly or gladly depending on how you look at it no longer breathe or walk on the face of the Earth off the top of your head you may be imagining some things like saber-tooth tigers crazy looking stegodon and other strange place toine or ice aged animals and though such creatures were found in the rest of the world they weren't what the first modern people saw and actually many of the iconic animals we associate with recent prehistory either never lived in Africa or had fully disappeared from the continent by the time we evolved instead Africa was on a very different path compared to other areas with the now extinct animals there following a trend of looking a lot like the ones we still have today but just being slightly off which is nicely exemplified by the Paleo loxodon besides their noticeable bone growths on top of their skulls this extinct elephant looked a lot like the living especially if you saw one from afar but if you did happen to walk up to it you notice that its proportions were all wrong as this mammal was an absolute Giant and is currently considered the largest mammal to have ever walked the Earth though at the same time it is also the smallest elephant to have ever lived as well and how is that possible you ask well there were multiple species belonging to this genus that greatly varied in size to say the least most of which were extinct by the late Pine while the majority of the then remaining were found outside of Africa leaving only one species left that the early modern humans witnessed the pale oxidon galenus this 13,000 year old species was not the largest paleo loxodon but it was definitely up there likely having been a direct descendant of the second largest member the REI and from what little remains we have it seems that galenus was fairly identical in size to its predecessor which is crazy considering that the reki was recently estimated to have stood at 4.2 M or 13.9 ft at the shoulders while weighing 15.3 tons making it not only heavier than every therapod ever but also 50% bigger than the heaviest African bush elephant known so with that said you probably are not surprised to hear that this size extended to its tusks as well but even for a 15-ton elephant their tusks were abnormally massive as Paleo oidon In general had the longest Tusk to body ratio of any known elephant resulting in tusks as long as the entire bodies of certain elephant species these tusks were also straighter than normal and closer to the ground allowing the galenus to easily strike smaller objects and interact with the ground perhaps using its tusks as a shovel in certain situations and to make this mammal just a little bit more menacing those protuberances on its skull that I mentioned are believed to have served the purpose of enhancing the Tusk lethality being an anchor point for a bunch of large muscles that supported their heads thus letting them swing their weapons around with even greater might and speed so by now you think that any sensible creature would have realized that you do not want to mess with a supercharged giant elephant and yet researchers believe that modern humans might have actually hunted these units is while no concrete proof exists we do know that other homo species in Eurasia were able to habitually hunt and butcher P loxodons of similar size using weapons like Spears and not to mention we also had javelins at this point as well now this being said if hunting did occur it was likely not an everyday coincidence considering that paleo loxodon was the largest animal on the entire continent and thus any attempt would bear a plethora of risks and not to mention there are plenty of other megap funel animals to choose from that were both smaller and less equipped and while this many times made for easier hunting smaller doesn't always Translate to easy and a good example of that is synus an tius colloquially known as the giant buffalo despite being many times smaller than paleo loxodon this extinct bid was still an absolute menace to society and is actually the largest bovid to have ever lived in Africa with adults measuring some 3 m or 10 ft long and standing 6.1 ft or 1.85 M tall at the withers so in other words taller than most mooses they were also completely roped in dense muscles and sported robust bones giving them some heft with larger males routinely cracking 2.2 tons similar to the weight of a white rhino the largest rhino on Earth today and when making this comparison you have to remember that rhinos basically a flipping armor like skin thus bulking up their weight while synoris an tikus was just pure muscle bone and a little keratin as these guys also had horns that would have put rhinos to shame with each jutting out to the side being slightly curved and very very long possibly reaching more than 1 M or 3 ft each almost resembling those seen in water buffalos to who it is closely related and in larger individuals it's thought that these horns could have been 3 m or 10 ft from tip to tip so equivalent to the length of a basketball hoop and longer than the horns of most ceratopsids including some that were nearly three times its body size so in order to accommodate this size and massive body the giant Bowl likely needed to graze huge quantities of foliage which in conjunction with presumed large herds resulted in this bid having profound impacts on the environment lived in with their movements Paving large paths due to this trait they would have been quite easy to track allowing for some of the braver Predators like humans perhaps to go after them though finding one was significantly easier than killing one considering that they were not afraid in the slightest to use their horns something we know thanks to actual recordings coming from ourselves you see these bowls routinely featured in cave art around Africa which often depicted them in the midst of a battle typically with other bulls with most have a face down stance using their horns to Ram into their foes and in fact these fights were so common that they hold the title for the most depictions of violence strongly suggesting that this bovid had a fairly short temper it also probably helped that it likely could run at top speeds of 35 miles or 56 km hour meaning that anything it made contact with besides maybe a Paleo loxodon was getting absolutely bodied of course though despite their huge horns size and ferocity this did not stop us again from haunting them nor did it stop the other us and by that I'm talking about other humans as you likely know multiple homo species have walked the Earth but people tend to forget that it wasn't just a straight ladder down to us with each one succeeding the last instead there was a surprising amount of overlap which basically climaxed during the time of the first modern humans as roughly 300,000 years ago there were four homo species living in Africa at the same time not necessarily in the same places per se but close enough that we might might have run in to each one separately and along with sapiens this included the netti rhenus and the hi highle bensis so quite a range by this time a couple of them had been around for hundreds of thousands of years while we on the other hand were rather fresh-faced and though all bore a lot of similarities to us it's still reasonable to think that some of these guys were seen as not like us by our predecessors especially the netti the oddest of the bunch this archaic human was fairly primitive compared to the rest and was rather ostr picus likee who was an even earlier homin from which the homogeneus descended from like our progenitor the NTI had a knack for trees as its bodybuild and design implied a more arboreal lifestyle and reduced the ability to run efficiently on land they were also quite petite compared to us being one of the smallest humans ever and had small brains to match with so far no material culture being assigned to them which potentially highlights a lesser level of technology that might have made them unable to compete against us or the other homo species furthermore their diets were quite uncompetitive too consisting of gritty food that was picked up from the floor and was covered in dust or dirt which is reflected by their typically eroded teeth so it would have been quite clear to modern humans that these guys are quite different but a much more Gray Line occurred with the rest specifically the hi highle bensis while the NTI is known purely from South Africa hi highle bensis is known from various African countries plus it did eventually leave the continent as well overall they were fairly comparable to modern humans sharing our height and having a similar brain size where they differed though was that they were a bit more Neanderthal likee possessing wide chests and robust frames that made them more durable and most likely stronger than we were so let's just say in a scrap between them and us I know who I'd bet on at least they also had technology that matched ours with their remains routinely being associated with fire usage primitive buildings Spears hand tools and even art and these advancements ultimately allow them to spread far and wide inhabiting a large range in Africa where they enjoyed a diet largely composed of meat as they were specialized in taking out large game in this overlap in both diet and range could technically have caused confrontations with Homo sapiens where violence may have occurred although interestingly enough there is a chance that any interaction might have been solved with words not violence or rather I should say sounds as studies on their hyoid bone and middle ears found that they theoretically could have had human-like speech and possessed an early form of language anguage which subsequently would have helped with teamwork and sure enough some sites do demonstrate Advanced cooperation including one in Kenya consisting of over 50 butchered therapist Oswald's showcasing that the hi highle Banus meant business and this business likely extended to the rensis a slightly older homo who is known from Zambia and was so similar to the hyal bensis that a lot of people actually think that it's a synonym for heidelbergensis instead of it being its own genus but whatever the the case it's at least clear that these two were intelligent and fairly modern humanlike making any contact between them and us a topic of great interest although for now no evidence of direct interactions are known of but there is at least one study that claims that we did to a degree interbreed with the hide orus in subsaharan Africa and in fact there are some who actually believe that they are the direct ancestors to us however I will mention that this has gotten quite the push back in recent years but technically is still a possibility yet just one fogged in mystery and just like our cloudy interactions with fellow homo species another area of uncertainty swirls around just about the scariest baboon like creature Nature's ever created the dinopithecus for now it's basically a gamble if this primate ever met sapiens as it's super Limited in the fossil record and there's a chance that it went extinct by the time we showed up but it was such an odd and scary creature that I feel like I've got to mention it and with a name literally meaning terrible ape dinopithecus was a primate larger than the average man with some specimens reaching 77 kg or 170 lb in weight and came equipped with deceptively powerful muscles in a giant skull that housed menacing canines 20% bigger than those seen in the largest baboons today so far fossil remains are only known from South Africa and Ethiopia where it is believed to have lived a bit like baboons sticking mainly to the ground and roaming the lands as opposed to swinging from trees and thus making possible run-ins all the more likely if they did align TimeWise however unlike baboons indifferent to most of its close relatives the dinopithecus seldomly ate grass or Savannah related Foods instead gorging itself on fruits and perhaps even the odd piece of meat or two as paleontologists believe it was an opportunistic feeder likely eating more flesh than the vast majority of primates did up until that point furthermore thanks to its size and wicked canines some have speculated that earlier and small oh homo species may have made up this occasional snack with the only Silver Lining here being that thanks to our size and Technology we at least were most likely in the clear and obviously I don't wish anything bad on our ancestors but it would be cool if they really did live with this essentially roed out baboon and in addition to this guy there was another animal that matched the dinopithecus weirdness despite not being nearly as dangerous who definitely did live amongst us the Rus and goric also known as the dinosaur will de Beast yes it did look slightly off compared to living artiodactyls thanks to its long and thicken neck but you wouldn't be able to tell it was Bizarre by just using your eyes instead you would have had to use your ears as while this animal did not look like a dinosaur it did surely sound like one namely a hadrosaur when they were first discovered paleontologists noted that within their skulls Rus and goric possessed large trumpet-like nasal structures that were unlike anything seen in other mammals yet were eerily similar to those found in hydrosaurus and actually its design is so unique that researchers don't even know of any other animal besides Lambos sauran with such Anatomy the researchers who discovered this creature believe that it convergently evolved this instrument thanks to its shared lifestyle with hydrosaurus as both lived in large herds in relatively open areas and as such a unique form of communication would have come in handy additionally both hydrosaurus and the rusen goric had very specialized diets and therefore teeth which indirectly might have led them to developing unique skull structures and thus resulting in their unique nasal passages and in the case of the rusen goric it's thought that they were able to create sounds so much lower than their normal vocal ranges that they could achieve infrasound if they wanted to a frequency that is too low for humans to hear in other words they could literally be having a shouting match and still be Library appropriate and maybe this silence might have made you hungry and I say this because out of the animals on the list so far the rusen goric is the only one known with skeletal evidence confirming predation by sapiens with a group located in Kenya having butchered marks and being found right next to human tools and the way in which the group died implied that humans likely hunted this wilderbeast sized bovid and mass with some even speculating that humans is what ultimately led to their Extinction and another animal that has joined them in extinction but likely not through humans is one that at first glance seems to be a very familiar face the metrio curus an extinct swine that could very well have taken pumba's place in Lion King as it was superficially an almost exact copy of the war toogs we know of today and sure enough it is thought to be a direct ancestor of their too the big difference is though was that this war toog like animal was a chunkster with the average specimen being as large as the biggest warart toogs currently alive with most having measured about 5 ft or 1.52 M and this is impressive in all yet where things really get crazy is in the weight Department because though you can find War toogs today that match their length the metrio kirus was extremely compact so compact in fact that one of the species is literally called the compactus and individuals could weigh more than twice that of a war Talk of the same length does with some estimates even suggesting a weight of over half a ton in bigger specimens so basically a horse but wox shaped and as you know wox can be a bit testy and aggressive likely a shared trait in this ancient swine a possibility made scarier by the fact that metrio Cirus had four tusks which were proportionally longer sharper and more straight than the other seen today making their heads almost look like a Stegosaurus thamiz in like its living relatives MRI Urus likely used these tusks for a variety of functions including fighting so you would definitely have wanted to steer clear from the sky which is a bit challenging as they were found across a good chunk of the continent and were typically out and about living grazing lifestyles in this animal nor the others mentioned were not the only familiar faces present as back then you also had many more kinds of rhinos zebras and giraffes but unlike this swine they weren't necessarily monstrous in size compared to their relatives but they did bring their own uniqueness for example there was a species of zebra that was found in the Sahara which is today a zebral list place then you also had a giraffe that was slightly taller than modern ones which also like to travel outside of Africa occasionally with most fossils actually being known from turkey and then perhaps most interestingly of all you had a hairy rhinoceros specifically the Stefano rhus hemus or the Ste Rhino for short unlike today this rhino could be found in Northern Africa over 200,000 years ago and compared to the living rhinos the step rhino referred slightly colder habitats which likely led to its sparse hairy coat that made it almost resemble a woolly Rhino albeit just not as big being more comparable to the white rhinoceros and despite being called the Steep Rhino you could actually find this rhino patrolling forests and Woodland areas where we know it frequently came into contact with people and how do we know this you ask well I'll let noro 2 explain hominins have been hunting megap for hundreds of thousands of years including the first modern humans multiple sites have shown us evidence of hunting and butchering of this animal including a set of stone tools in Jordan dating to around 250,000 years ago it may sound far-fetched that ancient humans would have been able to take down such a large animal with only simple tools though through experimentation I have found these weapons to be capable of much more than you would think simple wooden javelins are able to easily pierce the vitals if they slip between the ribs while Stone points are even able to smash through bone by this time humans had developed sophis icated stone tools which were Haled on Spears and presumably thrown these people would have been able to take down any animal in their world with the right strategy there is also evidence that we viewed this creature with high esteem and respect at least if it is believed to be cognates with neander tals as a Ste Rino was one of the few animals that occasionally became trophies for neander tal Hunters with skulls being kept presumably as prizes funny enough though while this animal has a lot of evidence for being hunted a study found that there is little evidence of support that its disappearance some 35,000 years ago was tied to human over hunting though as with many other P toen extinctions it is a matter of debate after this video come on over to my channel to learn about the Fearsome animals the first Native Americans encountered the evidence we have of their interactions and the effectiveness of their Stone tool technology back to extinct zoo and this generally follows the trend because while many animals did go extinct in Africa during the late pla scene they seem to have been doomed with or without us in compared to the rest of the world Africa did manage to retain a remarkable amount of its megap a prime reason why extinct humans actually did not see a crazy amount of odd creatures because simply put the weirdest ones are still with us and uh let's try to keep it that way thanks for watching and until next time onx think Zoo