Animals

The largest sea turtle ever known, sharing its ocean with some of the biggest marine predators in history.

One of the largest land animals ever known — a long-necked giant known from surprisingly few bones.

An early whale with a snake-like body — first mistaken for a giant marine reptile.

Africa's most infamous snake — named for its mouth, not its body color.

A nocturnal snake-eating specialist, active mostly after dark.

A camouflage specialist that would rather freeze in place than flee.

A crocodile relative so large it left bite marks on dinosaur bones.

A fast, alert hunter that thrives in farmland — which puts it in frequent contact with people.

A brightly banded, secretive snake — and a reminder that color-based ID rhymes aren't reliable.

A small, tree-dwelling viper named for the scales above its eyes.

Not one species but many — a whole group of leaf-green snakes with built-in heat vision.

One of the world's most recognizable snakes, thanks to its expandable hood.

The most toxic snake venom ever measured — and a species with zero confirmed human deaths.

The longest venomous snake in the world — and the only snake known to build a nest for its eggs.

The largest shark to ever exist, known almost entirely from its enormous fossil teeth.

A gigantic marine reptile, not a dinosaur, that ruled the Late Cretaceous oceans.

A hornless giant related to rhinos, and one of the largest land mammals that ever lived.

A giant Ice Age kangaroo with an unusual, single-toed foot.

One of the largest flying animals ever known — a pterosaur that wasn't a dinosaur at all.

One of Australia's most familiar snakes — genuinely venomous, but with no confirmed human deaths on record.

Nicknamed 'SuperCroc' — one of the largest crocodile relatives ever discovered.

A small snake responsible for an outsized share of the world's serious snakebites.

The saber-toothed cat — famous for canine teeth that could grow longer than a human hand.

Giant flightless predatory birds that ruled South America for most of the age of mammals.

A wetland specialist whose appearance varies so much between populations, color alone can't identify it.

A snake as long as a bus, that lived only a few million years after the dinosaurs went extinct.

The most famous dinosaur of all — an apex predator with a bone-crushing bite.

A tree-dwelling ambush hunter with males and females so different they were once thought to be separate species.

North America's iconic rattlesnake — and its rattle doesn't actually reveal its age.

An Ice Age giant so well preserved in permafrost that scientists have found its hair, skin, and even stomach contents.