Could T.rex and other megatheropods survive the Ice Age? How would megatheropods like Tyrannosaurus and Saurophaganax adapt to new giant herbivores like mammoths, mastodons, and ground sloths? This video analyzes how theropods from North America would adapt to survive in the strange new world of the Cenozoic, ranging from the Paleocene all the way to the end of the Pleistocene. It includes smaller Aggro theropods like Deinonychus and Utahraptor, Midrange theropods like Allosaurus and Lythronax, and Battlecruiser theropods like Tyrannosaurus, Acrocanthosaurus, and Saurophaganax. They’ll encounter threats like rats raiding their nests, the intelligence and herd behavior of mammoths, the bitter cold of glaciation, and the advent of Homo sapiens into North America. This is the second episode in the Megatheropod Speculative Ecology series, and includes input from paleontologists Thomas Holtz and Evan Johnson-Ransom. Could T.rex survive living with mammoths in a cold world?
Megatheropods in a Mammal-Dominated World 00:00
The Megatheropod Team 00:39
Paleocene 01:59
Eocene 04:05
Oligocene 06:28
Miocene 07:50
American Mastodon vs Tyrannosaurus 14:15
Pliocene 20:08
Pleistocene (includes Ice Age): 21:31
Humans vs Megatheropods 22:35
Thumbnail art by Balazs Petheo and Herschel-Hoffmeyer
Music from #Uppbeat (free for Creators!):
https://uppbeat.io/t/kevin-macleod/accralate
License code: BQIYCRNJ6VWXSGSS
Oxygen Garden by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
I Am Running Down the Long Hallway of Viewmont Elementary by Chris Zabriskie is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/
source
REFERENCES
Testing Clovis spears on elephants https://www.jstor.org/stable/280681
How dangerous grizzlies were to pre-gun cultures https://hughglass.org/grizzly-in-1800s/
Clovis mammoth kill site count https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/abs/pii/S1040618207003771?via%3Dihub
Size of the American Lion https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1671/039.029.0314
20,000 year old human footprints https://news.berkeley.edu/2023/10/05/tests-confirm-humans-tramped-around-north-america-more-than-20-000-years-ago
Ideal migration pathways https://around.uoregon.edu/content/new-data-suggests-timeline-arrival-first-americans
Cooper’s Ferry archaeological site may be older than Clovis https://www.science.org/content/article/first-people-americas-came-sea-ancient-tools-unearthed-idaho-river-suggest
North American agriculture https://esajournals.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/full/10.1890/ES10-00098.1
Larramendi 2015 https://www.app.pan.pl/archive/published/app61/app001362014.pdf
Hwange National Park lion pride specializes in killing elephants https://www.researchgate.net/figure/Age-class-distribution-of-elephants-observed-being-killed-by-lions-from-1993-to-1996_fig1_232693088
Elephant matriarchs will charge lions even if the lions aren’t attacking https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Suk8o0AjHMQ
Elephants become depressed if relatives die https://books.google.com/books?id=7JIAt-yfIJgC&pg=PA72#v=onepage&q&f=false
Information about elephants in musth https://www.elephantvoices.org/elephant-ethogram/ethogram-table/behavior?id=159
Elephant tusk durability https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=JlQMrvbtA8o
Elephant skull structure is light and honeycombed https://knysnaelephantpark.co.za/skeleton-skull/
Bulls fighting may break their tusks https://www.pbs.org/edens/etosha/elephant.htm#:~:text=When%20competing%20for%20mates%2C%20male,tusks%20than%20their%20calmer%20counterparts
Bulls fighting https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2XA3dgJiBT0
Bulls fighting more https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=KpN-P1OVzl4
Lions hunting elephants
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2lU8HcxIAw8
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=x4nG4JsAyKY
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=OA0HQwQpCBs&t=128s
https://blog.londolozi.com/2020/03/30/how-do-elephants-respond-to-leopards-and-lions/
Tyrannosaurus bite force https://peerj.com/articles/13731/
Tyrannosaurus biting Triceratops facial horns https://www.myfossil.org/featured-fossil-triceratops-vs-tyrannosaurus
Elephant birth rate https://spana.org/blog/elephant-pregnancy-facts/#:~:text=Elephants%20give%20birth%20around%20every,five%20babies%20during%20their%20lives
Elephant agility demonstration https://www.youtube.com/shorts/VdL8FtN_Lao
Teratophoneus gregariousness https://peerj.com/articles/11013/
Canadian tyrannosaur trackways https://www.theguardian.com/science/2014/jul/23/tyrannosaurs-hunted-packs-tracks-canada
Giant ground sloth body size https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10021-005-0076-8
Egg stealers during the time of the dinosaurs https://www.smithsonianmag.com/science-nature/scrambled-eggs-and-the-demise-of-the-dinosaurs-85969406/
Mammals weren’t outcompeting dinosaurs https://www.nature.com/articles/ncomms1815
Success of crocodilians despite mammalian interference https://www.researchgate.net/publication/259450979_The_Role_of_Predation_in_Shaping_Crocodilian_Natural_History
Nest guarding is likely a basal archosaurian trait https://defenders.org/wildlife/american-crocodile-and-alligator#:~:text=Roughly%201.25%20million%20alligators%20live,females%20will%20defend%20prime%20territory
Collaborative hunting by crocodilians https://www.researchgate.net/publication/272369202_Apparent_coordination_and_collaboration_in_cooperatively_hunting_crocodilians
Paleocene temperature http://www.scotese.com/paleocen.htm
Paleocene environment https://www.pbs.org/wgbh/evolution/change/deeptime/cenozo.html#:~:text=Ferns%2C%20horsetails%2C%20and%20shrubby%20flowering,America%2C%20Africa%2C%20and%20Australia.
Eocene environment https://cdnsciencepub.com/doi/10.1139/cjes-2016-0043#:~:text=The%20Eocene%20Epoch%20is%20well,as%20well%20as%20to%20climatologists
Eocene environment https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/tertiary/eocene.php
Oligocene environment https://www.pnas.org/doi/10.1073/pnas.2003914117#:~:text=Oligocene%20GMSTs%20were%20%E2%88%BC22,42%2C%2069
Oligocene environment https://ucmp.berkeley.edu/tertiary/oligocene.php
Oligocene ice sheets https://www.nature.com/articles/s41561-022-01025-x
Miocene temperature https://bolin.su.se/data/miocene-temperature-portal
Miocene environment https://chooser.crossref.org/?doi=10.2307%2F3515337
Miocene migration of muroids to North America https://academic.oup.com/sysbio/article/62/6/837/1710000?login=false
Pliocene temperature https://www.nature.com/articles/s41598-020-67154-8#:~:text=The%20Pliocene%20Epoch%20(2.588%20to,and%20Antarctic%20ice%20sheets2.
Pleistocene extinctions and environment https://www.nature.com/articles/s41467-020-16502-3
Hell Creek temperature https://www.researchgate.net/publication/279980306_A_florule_from_the_base_of_the_Hell_Creek_Formation_in_the_type_area_of_eastern_Montana_Implications_for_vegetation_and_climate
Favorite video by far
A group of Rexes is called a terror.
The official term for a group T-Rex is a "Terror"
MY BOI CERATOSAURUS MADE IT WOOOO
I'm excited for other renditions of this type of video! You thinking of doing an Asian version of this? Tarbosaurus and Zhucheng plus others doing an avengers level collaboration against Palaeoloxodon.
Ps: thats 2-0 for our therapod friends. I feel terrible for our alt timeline ancestors
Could I do the Asia chapter? I want to see the theropods against the great P.Namandicus
Moist
Primal flashbacks intensify
Honesty, given the potential intelligence and social behavior of tyrannosaurs, im not gonna rule out partnerships or even domestication of smaller species
I googled it, and apparently a group of tyrannosaurs is called a “terror”, which I think is solid.
Imagining the development of human civilization and culture with these big boys running around sounds like a fascinating alt history to explore. Gunpowder is a little over 1,000 years old- Homo sapiens is 200,000. Would we have figured it out early to defend ourselves from the big boys? Or would such dangerous predators stifle progress altogether?
Honestly, I want to know if Dinosaurs could survive modern humans, I'm sure smaller ones could, but I assume most of the big ones would get the A-10 Warthog treatment.
imagine that you are part of a hunt group and just manage to take down a wolly mammoth, and when you and your friends are preparing the animal, sudenlly 5 scally demons(saurophaganax) almost the size of the mammoth you just take down appears from the woods and start springting towards you, thats horrifing.
The thing with elephants is that they are quite sensitive to external Predators they arent used to dealing with.
And usually go extinct relatively quickly when threatened.
Their slow reproduction means they usually lose any evolutionary arms race and often do not have the numbers ro replenish casualties fast enough
I’d suspect in African spinosaurids could persist in the remote Congo swamp forests in modern times.
Ngl, i though they we're done for during the pleistocene but the mega carnivores would still dominate
I think I heard that the paper on the Canadian Tyrannosaur trackway referred to a pack of Tyrannosaurs as a "Terror"? Not sure if that was accurately reported though?
I think I could see the Tyrannosaurids going after Glyptodonts, since the larger species (Tyrannosaurus) would be able to out pace them, out maneuver their their tails, and crunch through their armor. Giant ground sloths might be a bit tricky or an interesting scenario for Tyrannosaurs, because Tyrannosaurs did evolve alongside both Therizinosaurs and Deinocheirids; while we currently don't have any evidence of either from higher latitude formations like Hell Creek, there has been at least 1 known species of Deinocheirid from Mexico, and it could be easily plausible that Therizinosaurs might be found there too that we have yet to find. So perhaps Tyrannosaurs would have "interacted" (hunted, fought or avoided) with giant ground sloths in a similar manner as they would have with Deinocheirids or Therizinosaurs?
Also, I could see Tyrannosaurs taking advantage of the Bering Land Bridge to invade Asia once again, and start taking advantage of the mega faunal food sources of Asia and probably Africa from there too?
Well I got to say a pack/group of T-Rex being called a nightmare is great!
I feel like the smaller to midsize predators would have been a very huge issue for humans.
This is most likely your best video yet. And thats not an easy bar to climb over. The amount of research and detail here is nuts. You gave both sides very fair arguments, whether it would be elephants vs theropods or early humans vs theropods.
I’d say I wanna live in a world like this diverged Pleistocene but if I was actually a human born back then and saw these dragons, I’d be scared shitless. And if they do somehow survive into the Holocene, I imagine they’ll evolve to be smaller, but still probably larger than bison and bears. Imagine Middle Ages North America with herds of bison and gangs of middle-range evolved Tyrannosaurus.
Speculative ecology is such a fascination and fun subject to read and or watch. Thank you for providing this kind of content to all of us!!
this needs to be a syfy book
The thing is elephants have never faced something on their size 12:13
Next suggestion: what theropods would survive into the Holocene, could be from any continent or this one as a jumping off point.
Next: if megatheropods could survive in modern world
I would think that they would go the way of the ground nesting birds, and rats would just eat their eggs. Plus, any group of people would use fire, projectiles and extermination tactics against therapods at any opportunity. I think that it would be just too easy to kill their young.
Recent studies and finding show that humans had farming from as early as 12,000 BC.
This video was fantastic, I honestly loved the parts with Tyrannosaurus fighting the prehistoric elephantoidea, Mammutidae and just elephants in general. Honestly I would love an updated tyrannosaur PSA from you as you seem to be the most reliable channel on tyrannosaurus, Actually considering speculative weights for tyrannosaurus instead of only giving that to other large theropods, But more or less on the bite, How quick it could crush, Most likely not like a trash compacter but an actual jaw. And this video was a great example of theropods in the Cenozoic in general.
I wonder how early humans would react to the giant Titanosaurs.
While I really enjoy the idea of the Clovis culture developing a degree of reverence for the megatheropods, I'm concerned that they would still lead to the demise of the megatheropods, even if unintentionally. After all, the early settlers in North America hunted the remaining megafauna to extinction. If this came to pass, megatheropods would be out of a food source and starve.
Your idea of the Clovis culture scavenging off the leftovers of megatheropods' kills makes for an interesting alternate history scenario. If they drifted away from hunting big game directly and opted to scavenge off of megatheropods instead, could the mammoth and mastodon populations have remained stable enough to potentially last beyond the end of the Pleistocene? What sort of effect could a diverse menagerie of megafauna have on Native American culture?
You didn't include Giganotosaurus 😡
Ancalagon caught be off guard to the point that I spat my coffee out – what a legend.
Saurophaganax bigger than Acrocanthosaurus 🗿
666 likes
Bs
This is amazing please do South American theropods next it is a hotbed of huge Carcharodontosaurs
I loved the ending. Reminds me of all the old fantasy scenarios in fiction where early humans interacted with dinosaurs.
A terror of Tyrannosaurs sounds best IMO
Another interesting and excellent video! I was really looking forward to seeing how the theropods would handle the Pleistocene my personal favourite out of the Cenozoic
I was a little bit disappointed there wasn't much discussion given on how the introduction of the larger Columbian mammoth would fare against theropods or even the woolly mammoth against the smaller ones.
I do personally think that some Proboscideans might succumb to the sheer amount of predation sadly but some would maybe persevere, I do think that they'd maybe attempt to migrate maybe more open areas which might give them an advantage spotting a threat sooner.
One thing I do like to imagine is how many big theropod species would be in competition with one another, I can so imagine a T.rex that's having a confrontation with an Acrocanthosaurus over let's say the carcass of a woolly mammoth that was hunted.
I wonder how the giant short faced bear would of handled large theropods invading the environment? Perhaps they'd of resorted to a more omnivorous diet than before to avoid competition.
Could we see this for Australia?
Overall in conclusion I think the Proboscideans would definitely suffer losses that much is guaranteed although I do still think the Columbian mammoth and woolly mammoth might have the best chances of holding on to some degree.
The American Mastodon however I don't know… It might be too much.
Thank you for making me this video I really enjoyed it 🙂
I wanted to say perhaps in the future you could do a sort of spin off with different dinosaurs in different time periods and formations of the Mesozoic?
So for example how would T.rex do in the Morrison formation of the late Jurassic period? Alternatively how would Allosaurus do in Hell Creek?
T.rex in the Huincle formation alongside Argentinosaurus? Giganotosaurus or Acrocanthosaurus being in the dinosaur park formation etc
Therizinosaurus being placed into the Wessex formation?
I love this guy
Damn I wish that Dakotaraptor was in it
I think the elephant situation is handled very well in the spec evo/biology tales of kaimere handles the elephant situation well.
I wish you had Spinosaurs in it just to mix it up. I feel like Baryonyx and Irritator would do well
What happened to Paleoxodon and paracetherium?
Great video
I suppose I might be a bit inclined to think that the Pleistocene extinctions were caused by human intervention, but I think you are underestimating how much the arrival of paleo-indians would spell trouble for time travelling theropods. They'd probably have a similar problem as the predators we know went extinct, like the American lion or Smilodon, only the most rugged and adaptable would survive and humans are a particularly dangerous and unfamiliar new arrival that can both kill them and their prey items and make life a lot more difficult, especially as the climate changes.
The megatheropods would be in the most trouble, as you mention humans would start directly competing with them for their main food items, the largest herbivores, and the process of dwindling prey populations of large, reasonably slow animals would cause big problems, especially as human influence begins to radically change the nature of the environment, even before the invention of agriculture. Could T-Rex adapt to a world where the largest animal around for them to eat is a Bison, and where increasingly numerous and well organized bands of humans can pepper them with spears or set traps that regularly kill even the most powerful individuals? I think if Smilodon couldn't hack it, then Tyrannosaurs have no chance at all.
I love the ending of this video, megatheropods and humans mutually benefiting each other in order to survive, although I feel like it would’ve started differently
Early humans in North America seemed to mostly hunt medium to large game such as mammoths. Since the larger and largest of the theropods used these as their main food source I would imagine instead of directly competing with 10+ ton hairy lizards that make the very earth quake in their presence, early humans might’ve decided to hunt the things they didn’t predate on.
Furthermore, if the megatheropods could outrun humans for the most part, it would make sense that they would distance themselves from the medium sized carnivores like allosaurus and smaller tyrannosaurs. As for the larger tyrannosaurs like T Rex, I think that instead of competing with them or fearing them, I think that early humans might see the mightiest of the tyrants as gods. Enormous thunderous beasts that lurk in the forests, preying on all that moves and wiping out entire villages by themselves. Their folklore would tell tales of the forest gods, immense hairy dragons that rattle the very heavens with every step, and their booming calls rumbling through the hills, flattening entire mountains in their wake
What an excellent video! This cements your position as my favorite prehistoric YouTuber!
Anyway, a thought about packing hunting for the megatheropods. Is it still considered pack hunting if its a mated pair of acros or rexes? Pack hunting in my head is like a wolf pack or lion pride, not two big megatheropods and maybe some of their young.
Thumbnail got me thinking they discovered theropods in the ice age😭