Dunkleosteus, a Terror Before the Dinosaurs

People are scared of many different things. Monsters of all kind surround us, and the line that separates real ones of the ones that live on our dreams, is often very thin. Vampires, werewolves and parents-in-law compete to conquer our fears. However, I wander sometimes, is it something scariest than Nature? For a good answer, let us look at the Dunkleosteus, a just discovered marine prehistoric creature that could be the king of our worst nightmares.

Scientifics from the
Field
Museum
and the

Chicago
University

built a biomechanical recreation of this real monster, and they felt stunned and in shock with the result. The Dunkleosteus was a huge animal, belonged to the Pacodermus species. His size was more of ten meters long and four tons of weight, and he was one of the first's predators. He lived on Earth on the Devonian Period, 415 and 360 millions of years ago, 175 millions of years before the dinosaurs appeared. The scariest thing about the Dunkleosteus was that he had a huge month, with a two sharp lines of bones that could brake and smashed his victims in seconds. His powerful bite had 5000 kilos of strength and the knives of his month concentrate that strength in a little point of the front, with an amazing strength of 36000 kilos per square pound. Our scary White Shark, and a huge one, only could bite with half of this strength. The Dunkleosteus could open his mouth vary fast, and trap his victims with the mouth open, using a very strong suction force. The Dunkleosteus was one of the first animals with vertebrate mandibles, and he had an armor of hard and heavy bones in the head and neck.His ferocity and strength give the Dunkleosteus an honor place in the most famous predators group on History, with the Tyrannosaurus Rex, or the big crocodiles.

This sweet little fish ate everything that swam around him, fishes, shells, crustaceous and sharks. Sharks at that time were a primitive version of the ones we have now, and apparently, there were only a little amount of them in the old waters. Was after the extinction of the Dunkleosteus that sharks started their evolution and increased in number, becoming the new terror of the water. The reason for the Dunkleosteus' disappearance is not clear yet, as the extinction of the dinosaurs millions of years after.Imagine this animal, with all his strength and ferocity, and incorporate him to your personal gallery of horrors. As always, the worst monsters of all are the ones that really exist, or existed, like the Dunkleosteus. And oceans are big, deep and full of secrets, who knows if this friend is still swimming on them, waiting to surface and extinct us? Which more terrible creatures are still living in the dark, going through evolution patiently, until they will be ready to take over the Earth? Uff, this makes one shake.