10 Terrifying Creatures That You’ll Be Glad Are Extinct

Fangs, claws, pincers and spindly legs designed to scuttle right through your nightmares - Mother Nature has a pretty vivid imagination when it comes to putting together some of her more terrifying creations. The dim, distant past seems to have been her cubist period - full of strange forms, frightening functions and way more teeth than is strictly necessary.

Us humans may like to think that we have the smarts - it's how we got to where we are today - but that probably wouldn't be all that helpful in a showdown with a 50 foot snake capable of swallowing an entire children's tea party whole. Unfortunately, our big old brains probably aren't a match for that kind of brawn.

But, all said, when we take a look at the endless parade of perfectly honed killing machines, super bugs the size of your family pet, and sea monsters that roamed the prehistoric oceans eating other sea monsters, shouldn't we really be questioning whether the true monsters are in fact inside ourselves? No. No, we shouldn't. It's definitely still the thing with teeth like katanas, we're afraid of.

Just be glad there are a few million years and a couple of extinction events separating us from them.

Let's get everybody's favourite swimming nightmare factory out of the way at the very beginning. Megalodon has gained public notoriety thanks to countless works of fiction playing on our inherent fear of apex predators with countless rows of razor sharp teeth (weird, right?). With a name that literally means "Big Tooth", this is unsurprising.

It is believed that Megalodon could grow to up to 18 metres (nearly 60 feet) in length, dwarfing modern great whites, the largest of which measure in at a measly six (but are more commonly around four).

Megalodon may have feasted on prehistoric whales, dolphins, giant turtles and basically anything else it damn well pleased. Its enormous jaw, lined with 18cm teeth had the strongest bite of anything to ever live and could pulverise a whale's skull with ease.