Prehistoric Beasts that Never Existed

UPDATED A few prehistoric beasts found in books and online are likely (or certain) never to have existed. Some are merely speculations; others are outright hoaxes of frauds. There's a possibility that at least some of the creatures listed here, might turn out to be real after all, or that very similar creations might turn up.

 Charles R. Knight's iconic painting of the Agathaumas

 Agathaumas

The agathaumas was a completely hypothetical ceratopsian that combined traits of triceratops with monoclonius, with fanciful embellishments. It was based merely a few ceratopsian bone fragments. A single huge horn on the nose, two small ones over the eyes a ring of small spikes on the frill, and a body covered in armor-like scutes--convincing enough to be a real animal, but nothing quite like it every really lived. Nevertheless, it was immersed into popculture at the time, making it onto a trading card, and into the first Lost World movie. It was supposed to appear in a stop-motion documentary film called Evolution. There is even a small, metal game piece by Ral Partha based on it. 

Scene from the 1925 Lost World

Agathumas as it was supposed to appear in O'Brian's stop-motion documentary of life on earth Evolution, courtesy Don Glut's Dinosaur Scrapbook

 Lost World publicity poster, also from Glut's Scrapbook

The Ral Partha game figure based on Agathaumas

Brachyeneme Draculae

This was reputed to a colossal, six-foot owl that lived during the Cretaceous in what is now Transylvania, home of the infamous count, where it preyed on the small species of ankylosaur depicted above. At least, according to the Dinosaurs coloring book I got at the museum, with lavishly detailed ink drawings like the one above. Actually, the hypothetical bird was based on a few bone fragments that belonged to something else. Birds of prey, and certainly true owls, did not exist in the Cretaceous, evolving millions of years later, even though birds, some indistinguishable from modern species did exist. During the Miocene, there was a six-foot tall bird of prey called argentavis that terrorized the S. American pampas, with a wingspan the size of pteranodon, but no owl that huge has ever been discovered. 

Pyrokerberus

The pyrokerberus was allegedly a mesonychid predator of the late Eocene, with bizarre osicorn-like projections on its skull. It is seen here pursuing a young entelodont, before both predator and prey got mired in a bog where they were fossilized, somewhere in the Death Valley area. Now, mesonychids (and their relatives the condylarths) were unrelated to any modern carnivore, and depended on size and ferocity for survival, most being small brained. They were more related to some herbivorous mammals today, and their toes sported hooves, not claws. It is therefore conceivable that a creature such this might have existed. Only so far as I can tell, this one didn't. Again, it might be the product of mere speculation based on fossilized fragments. But it's even more likely that this is an Internet hoax. It seems to only appear in fanart, not in sources written by scientists, and one scientist opined it was actually the invention of a deviant artist!

Hydrachus Sillinani

The Hydrachus was a fantastic sea-serpent that was really constructed by a 19th century hoaxer named Albert Koch. He constructed out of several zueglodont skeletons into one horrendous monster. Zueglodon itself was quite impressive, but I suppose Koch wasn't satisfied. The "scientific" name was supposedly to 'honor' a scientist named Benjimen Silliman who believed. He originally intended to name it after another man, but Silliman was safely dead, and could not object to the "honor."

Giant Tusked Warthog

The giant warthog Afrochoerus (which I incorrectly spelled Anchorus in an earlier post--sorry about that) of the early Plesticene DID exist. It just didn't sport the great, sweeping tusks as Jay Matternes depicts it here. Those came from a prehistoric elephant, possibly a gomphothere or relative thereof. They were found in the same deposit, and Leakey misidentified them as belonging to the pig!

African Tigers

I've written about these in a couple of other posts. Leakey, the famous anthropologist speculates that tigers once roamed the savannas of Africa, because they uncovered feline skulls that seem to resemble tigers more than lions. However, he acknowledges that tiger and lion skulls are notoriously similar. There is a portion of bone, however, that allows lion skulls to rock on a flat surface, while tiger skulls remain flat. These skulls remained flat. However, it's a small difference, and I've turned up any further evidence that these were tigers in any source, web or print (Leakey's book Animals of East Africa was published sometime during the 70s). So African tigers appear to be based on misidentification. Still, no one has come forth with proof either way, so the jury is still on the existence of tigers having once roamed Africa. 

Archeoraptor

Archeoraptor was a fictitious feathered dinosaur created by a hoaxer from the bone fragments and feathered imprints of two separate dino-bird fossils found in the Liaoning  Province of China. Apparently, the motive of its creation was to make money. However, it looks very similar to the many other, quite authentic members of the same family, discovered in the same area. Just looking at it, I'd just take for an archeopteryx (found in Germany) or related species. Creationists love to point to this hoax as evidence against evolution, when scores of other genuine dino-birds just like it have been found!

Nebraska Man

Nebraska Man was an honest mistake, based on a human-like tooth, that actually turned out to belong to an ancient pig! Thus the Neanderthal-like hominids shown here with primitive horses and camels in the background never were. Humans evolved strictly in Africa and Asia, and none ever reached the Americas until the arrival of the American Indian a mere 10,000 years ago. 

Eoanthropus

Eoanthropus, better known as Piltdown Man, is perhaps the most infamous paleontological hoax of them all! He was created by Charles Dawson, who already had a history of faking fossils. Dawson and his cronies glued the lower jaw of a modern orangutang to the upper jaw of a modern human who had died within historical times, then dyed them a dark color to make them appear old. There were, of course, some skeptics, but the majority of respected scientists were taken in. It seems Dawson counted on flattering the English, as the "fossil' seemed to substantiate that high intelligence had developed before modern facial features, and it had happened in their own country! Even American Museum currator Henry Fairfield Osborn, vouched for Piltdown's authenticity. It wasn't until 1953 that Dawson's hoax was finally exposed, using chemical means of determining the age which had not existed at the time of its "discovery." Dawson had already died a respected man who had been honored for discovering a new type of prehistoric human. 

  Eoanthropus, shown here alongside some (very real) straight-tusked elephants and ancient horses. 

I first learned of Eoanthropus around third grade from my copy of Album of Prehistoric Man, which included a chapter entitled The Man Who Wasn't There. It was in 1924 that the fossil of the true "missing link" was discovered in Africa, a youth of the species Australopithicus. I once wrote a Sherlock Holmes pastiche that had Dawson (and sense, also Eoanthropus) as main characters, called The Maple White Terror, and it can be found here:

https://www.amazon.com/Maple-White-Terror-Sherlock-Adventure-ebook/dp/B01317ZZN0

Non-Human Neanderthal

Some years ago, an author named Danny Vedremini (don't know much regarding his scientific credentials) proposed that Neanderthals were actually not human at all, as most restorations depict them, but were another sort of primate entirely. They were covered with thick shaggy fur, had white-less eyes that shone fearsomely in the dark--fierce, carnivorous shaggy man-apes that walked on two legs and terrorized our own Cro-Magon. These creatures adapted by their shaggy pelts to the forest of northern Eurasia, literally preyed on humans and ate-them! According to Vendrimmi's "neanderthal Predation Theory", as he explains in a youtube video and a forthcoming book, humans were unable to colonize Europe until they vanquished these brutish monsters. Humans first living in Europe dreading the coming of night with these creatures around. And it can be inferred that our legends of trolls, ogres and orcs had their origins in these real-life terrors.

    I first remember coming across one of Vendrimi's youtube videos, and suspected that it had to sensationalist nonsense without any supporting evidence. And...well, that's pretty much all it proved. Neanderthals were, once, thought to be hairy and barely human (based on the fossil of an old man crippled with arthritis), and the stereotype showed up often in pop culture, to name one example the short story "Spear and Fang" by Robert E. Howard. NOT to be confused with the series Primal, which depicts its Neanderthal hero accurately!

Homo Erectus Giants (Meganthropus)

In this Roy Krenkel drawing for Creepy magazine, Java Man flees from a hulking Meganthropus

On the miniturized ecosystem of islands, dwarf and giant versions of "normal" species sometime develop, to exploit the abundance of food, and the freedom from predation. In the time of Homo Erectus, humans were still pretty much a part of the ecosystem, and subject to it. It has now been verified that a pymy version of Erectus, called Homo Florensis, did in fact, exist on the Indnesian island of Flores, until relatively recently, long after other Erectus species had vanished from the earth. Very likely, the pygmies, who shared their world with pygmy stegadon elephants and giant monitor lizards were wiped out once modern humans discovered them. 

But what about giants? They, too, exist throughout folklore, but were they ever a reality? Jaw fragments thought to have belonged to some manner of Homo Erectus have been found on Java (home to "Java Man" an Erectus subspecies), but suggest a much larger hominid. Meganthropus, as it is called, has been estimated by some to have been eight to ten feet tall in height. But this is merely guesswork, and the very existence of meganthropus as a separate, island-dwelling species, is quite literally fragmentary. There did certainly exist an enormous primate, gigantapithicus, larger than the gorilla, that is sometimes depicted as humanoid (a possible candidate for the yeti and sasquatch as living survivors). But all evidence suggests that gigantapithicus was merely a giant ape, not an ape-man, and related to the orangs and gibbons of Asia, not the apes of Africa, as are humans, including such primitive forms as Homo Eerectus. So the jury remains out on the existence of giant ape-men. 

Creepy's Loathsome Lore page by Roy G. Krenkel, about the possibility of surviving ape-men

Armed Terror Bird

A terror-bird with re-evolved theropod-like arms attacks a thoatherium. 

It was theorized in the nineties that Phousrhachid terror bird s of the Miocene pampas may have re-evolved dinosaurian arms to catch their prey. Not surprisingly, this theory came in the wake of 1994 Jurassic Park movie. The idea was even incorporated into the Turok: Son of Stone animated movie. It was also speculated that a few late-surviving terror birds were encountered by the first paleo-Indians to arrive in the Americas. The phorusrachids were successful enough predators that one species, Titanis Walleri extended its range up into North America once the Panama Ithmus connected the two continents. But even it was eventually out-competed by placental saber-tooth cats long before the first humans arrived. Both of these theories were later proven false; it may be that there exists some natural law that forbids the re-evolution of forelimbs in birds, even when it seems such be an advantage. The modern hoatzin, for example, only possess relic claws for climbing as an infant. 

Teratosaurus Theropod

The teratosaurus was once believed to have a large-sized theropod dinosaur of the Triassic. It is often portrayed with a large, almost frog-like mouth similar to those Star-Wars beasties (forget their name) that look like a cross between a theropod dinosaur and a pirannah. Teratosaurus was actually found to be a large member of the land-croc family, looking very like postosuchus. The largest known theropod of the Triassic was the small herrarasaurus. No large theropods are known to have existed at the time.