My personal top 10 all time favorites are:
1.Velociraptor(actually Utahraptor/Dakotaraptor/Deinonychus/Achilobator) doesn’t matter: they are all just awesome, the fact that they hunted in packs, were vicious killers with their deadly claws, were so fast and agile that someone couldn’t possibly escape from them is just fabulous at the least, truly a six foot turkey… And I don’t know if they could really open unlocked doors tho…
2.Spinosaurus: it was literally the largest theropod ever, bigger than T-Rex and even Giganotosaurus! It could swim, eat huge fish, hunt larger dinosaurs, hunt on land, hunt in water, just pure badassery!
3.T-Rex: I don’t really think I need to explain this one…
4.Dilophosaurus: not small and not too large carnivore with signature crests on it’s head perfectly capable of hunting and killing anything middle-sized creature, it has really grown on me with of course Jurassic Park since I was 3 years old and with ARK in 2015, even without the frill and venom, still totally amazing. If they ever succeed in ressurecting a dinosaur, they really should use Chlamydosaurus lizard DNA on it tho… Baby and fully grown:
4.Mosasaurus: the biggest marine reptile ever, it hunted other Mosasaurses, sharks, turtles, everything It could get it’s huge jaws on, was 17 meters long!
5.Pteranodon: bigger than any bird alive today, dive-bombed into the water to eat fish, truly an iconic creature!
5.Tylosaurus: once again, huge marine reptile,14 meters long and also hunted everything Mosasaurus did, always wanted to have one roaming in Danube!
6.Compsognathus: just a cute little vicious carnivore fellas that everyone would want as a pet and you should not mess with!
7.Dimorphodon: very cute little bird from the Jurassic, really has a special place for me and I love it, even if it would probably attack you in an instant lol
8.Giganotosaurus: literal gigachad of Cretaceous period bigger than T-Rex!
9.Quetzalcoatlus: biggest bird ever with 12 meters wingspan bigger than my building where I live, what else do you need?
10.Carnotaurus: a vicious and fast predator with an iconic horns and smol arms!
I’m bashing my brain trying to gauge which ones I like more for a top ten. I love it all, all life and all of its strange, strange creatures
I can’t think of a proper top 10 list at the moment, but here are some of them, in no particular order
Livyatan melvillei, one of the largest known carnivorous cetaceans. A type of sperm whale. Although the Megalodon was much bigger, the Livyatan was likely much more intelligent. 9.9-8.9 Ma.
Basilosaurus, a genus of toothed whales. Some species were even bigger than the Livyatan, but they existed many millions of years before (41.3-33.9 Ma).
Woolly mammoths. Not the biggest elephantids (that’d be Palaeloxodon namadicus), but they’ve got fur, so they’re cooler by default. 0.40-0.0037 Ma.
Woolly rhinoceroses, for the same reason. 3.6-0.01 Ma.
Then there’s the aforementioned Quetzalcoatlus, Spinosaurus, and Tyrannosaurus, for obvious reasons
All of them are cool, we are also close to ressurrect Mammoths!!
- Dilophosaurus, I’ve loved 'em ever since I first saw Jurassic Park. Hell, I even made my fursona a Dilophosaur (scalesona? eh, who gives a shit)
- Liopleurodon, they were my favorite animal in Walking With Dinosaurs and are still one of my favorite marine reptiles. Though the Liopleurodon in that show was absolutely gargantuan and waaay too big.
- Pterygotus, a huge 6-foot arthropod from the Middle Silurian period found in the oceans that once covered the Americas, Europe, and Australia. Can’t say I’d like to encounter one face-to-face, but they’re cool nontheless.
- Helicoprion, they’ve got a cool lookin’ lower jaw. Not much more to say, other than that I’ve seen reconstructions that give it a big snoot like a goblin shark, which is pretty rad if I do say so myself.
- Akmonistion, an early shark from the Carboniferous with a weird cheese grater-lookin’ thing on its dorsal fin. Looks pretty cool.
- Tyrannosaurus. This one should be obvious.
- Appalachiosaurus, a tyrannosauroid found fairly close to my home state with longer-than-average arms for its clade. Early reconstructions gave it really long arms that made it look kinda like the I. rex.
- Micropachycephalosaurus, because it’s the dinosaur with the longest name out of any.
- Postosuchus, a large bipedal rauisuchid somewhat related to modern crocodiles. It was one of the apex predators during the Triassic period.
- Last but not least, Shastasaurus, the largest ichthyosaur ever, which was about the size of a bowhead whale.
Totally badass creatures! Helicoprion was a nightmare fuel tho… And yes, Liopleurodon is comically oversized in Walking with Dinosaurs, same with Mosasaurus in Fallen Kingdom, still, one of the best marine reptiles ever IRL!
About Dilo: similar situation with me man, Velociraptor from the first Jurassic Park was my personal ‘‘literally me’’ character for more than a decade…
