- 24/07/2025
Documentary, River Monsters S07E03 Prehistoric
Category
🐳
AnimalsTranscript
00:00I'm Jeremy Wade.
00:02For more than 30 years, I've been investigating underwater mysteries.
00:07Is the fish?
00:09And uncovering nightmarish beasts.
00:13Ah!
00:14But if I thought I'd seen the worst, I'd be wrong.
00:21Half a billion years of evolution has seen millions of fish come and go.
00:27Among the monsters that were stranger, deadlier and bigger than anything alive today.
00:36But with the evidence locked in stone, it's been impossible for me to pursue these prehistoric predators.
00:44Now, however, breakthroughs in technology mean I've found a way to unlock their secrets.
00:51It's amazingly clear. You've got upper jaw, lower jaw.
00:54And now that the door to the prehistoric past is open, I have to go through.
00:59This is the first time I've been so close to such a large predator.
01:03I'm going on an epic journey around the globe and back in time
01:08to hunt down the greatest river monster that ever lived.
01:23In 30 years of tracking down monsters, I've always relied on a fishing line to get results.
01:30They do exist, they do exist.
01:35But this mission is different.
01:38I need to find a way to connect with another time.
01:42Because the monsters I'm hunting now lived millions, even hundreds of millions of years ago.
01:49I'm going to hunt the special living river monsters that still carry echoes of the distant past.
01:58They're going to help me find the biggest, baddest river monster of all time.
02:04Where better to begin than with the ultimate instrument of death and destruction?
02:13This is a cast of a tooth that's around 260 million years old.
02:20It belonged to the very first river monster.
02:25One way to help me picture my prehistoric contenders is to draw them out in sand, life size.
02:34This ten foot long serpentine swamp monster was a lethal ambush predator known as the xenocanth or eel shark.
02:45These were the first prehistoric predators to take over fresh water.
02:50In Texas you still find their fossils and similar habitat today.
02:59So that's where I'm starting my investigation.
03:05These fresh water sharks were hunting.
03:07I wouldn't recognise the vegetation, it would be quite different to what we've got here.
03:10But the general feel, the general habitat would be quite similar.
03:13You'd have these channels, but then off the channels you'd have lots of trees standing very close together.
03:20Eel sharks were the top predator of warm swamps and rivers like these in the prehistoric past.
03:27And ambush hunters are defined by their habitat.
03:32If I can find the top predator here today, then maybe it can shed light on the rise of the very first river monster.
03:40Normally I tend to fish with one rod and I tend to hold that rod or have it very close to me.
03:45With more than one line I can cover a lot more water.
03:55This has taken 20 yards or so.
03:59It's still going, it's moving right to left.
04:03There.
04:04Still going, it's going across the river now.
04:06I don't know.
04:09Lost man.
04:13Gonna tighten up and go.
04:14Okay?
04:18Yep, this is a good sized fish.
04:23There it is, there it is, there it is.
04:24There it is.
04:34Got her, guys.
04:36Fantastic.
04:38It's an alligator gar.
04:40A living fossil that's been unchanged for more than 60 million years.
04:44And is close to the size of the prehistoric eel shark.
04:47Take it to the beach here where we can actually just gently slide it up on the sand.
04:56But I'm wary of any predator that weighs in at over 120 pounds.
05:02You hear it?
05:06This fish's body is packed with muscle to launch surprise attacks.
05:11Just as I imagined the eel sharks was.
05:15Right, this creature is very much the top predator in the water these days.
05:19And that's a double row of teeth it's got on the upper jaw.
05:23But the eel shark took its hardware to an even more devastating level.
05:29If you can imagine something where every tooth has two prongs.
05:33Then any attempt to wriggle free would shred the prey alive.
05:37This ten foot long prehistoric predator was the largest freshwater fish of its time.
05:44And grew bigger than any fish in these waters today.
05:47The xenocanth, an eel-like shark would have been three and a half foot longer than this.
05:54Eel sharks dominated the world's swamps and rivers for more than a hundred million years.
06:00Hunting the same waters as the ancestors of the gar.
06:03Eel sharks were the kings of stealth.
06:30Freshwater swamp monsters that ambush their victims at close range.
06:36But many factors make for a successful predator.
06:40Like strength.
06:42Size.
06:44And speed.
06:48Evidence is emerging of a fast swimming open water predator which definitely ticks all these boxes.
06:54And it's being excavated from landlocked Kansas.
07:01I'm on an excavation site where this lightning fast predator has been found.
07:07But its exact location is secret so that the site's not looted.
07:11But I can tell you it lies in the smoky hills of Kansas.
07:14In the heart of tornado alley.
07:15Normally we can't see what's beneath the surface of the earth without digging a hole.
07:27But what's happened here is that nature in the form of wind and water has done the excavation for us.
07:33And as I walk down into these chalk deposits layer by layer.
07:38It's literally like travelling back in time.
07:40And just about everywhere you look emerging into the light for the first time in 85 million years are the remains of extinct creatures.
07:53And they're mostly things like these clams that you can see here.
07:55But there were also predators.
08:00This tooth belonged to a lightning fast river monster called Xifactinus.
08:08Some of the bodies exhumed from this ancient seabed have reached more than 17 feet long.
08:15To get my first glimpse of this deadly speed merchant, I'm going to the Rocky Mountain Dinosaur Resource Center.
08:21Where its fossils are cleaned, cast and then reconstructed into three dimensional skeletons.
08:34Now that I can see the whole thing in three dimensions, there are parts of it that really do remind me of fish that I've seen in the flesh.
08:44The way the jaws operate is uncannily like the goliath tiger fish.
08:48And the shape of the body is somewhat like a giant tarpon.
08:54The tarpon uses this streamlined body design to cut through the water with minimal drag.
09:00It's explosive on the line and reaches weights of 350 pounds.
09:05Yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah, yeah.
09:07But Xifactinus could top a ton.
09:12This is the biggest complete specimen of Xifactinus that's ever been found.
09:17Here's the tail.
09:20Dorsal fin.
09:22And all the way down here, giving a total length of 18 and a half foot, the head.
09:27And there are bones from other individuals that suggest they could have grown even bigger.
09:39The shape of its skeleton, especially the design of its pectoral fins and tail, is very close to another open water predator living today.
09:49I'm heading south of the equator to the Indian Ocean to try to catch a sailfish, the fastest fish on the planet,
09:59which in terms of sheer speed could be a very close match for the torpedo-like Xifactinus.
10:04The large eye sockets on the Xifactinus skull suggest to me that it was a sight predator, just like the sailfish.
10:14We have some teasers off the back in addition to the wake of the boat.
10:19And there are baits swimming fast across the surface.
10:23I'm waiting for something to hit one of those.
10:25I'm waiting for something to hit one of those.
10:45Oh, yeah.
10:48Oh, I think it's off.
10:50No.
10:52Oh.
10:53I'm on a mission to hunt down the biggest, most terrifying river monster that ever lived.
11:15My latest contender is the Xifactinus,
11:17whose giant, streamlined fossils suggest a predator engineered for speed.
11:26To help me construct a mental picture of a live Xifactinus,
11:30I'm after the fastest fish alive today, the sailfish.
11:34Oh, yes.
11:39The only problem is, I've never tried to bring in a fish that can swim this fast.
11:44That'll happen very, very quickly. It's just jumping there in the distance.
11:47I think I'm under, I'm going to come that side.
11:51Here we go.
11:53This fish can strip line in explosive bursts approaching 70 miles per hour.
11:59All right, let's get some line back in.
12:00Oh, no, it jumps, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump, jump.
12:03And again.
12:04I'm going to come round to the front, round to the front, round to the front.
12:06If I can keep it on the hook, it should tire enough for me to bring it in.
12:13Slowly going.
12:14Fine.
12:22Sailfish have been known to impale fishermen during the struggle to bring them on board.
12:29This is a real first for me.
12:32Sailfish.
12:33That's the reason it's called that.
12:35This fish is said to be the fastest fish on the planet today.
12:40Clocked at nearly 70 miles an hour.
12:43The sail is a bit of a mystery.
12:45Some say it's used to corral smaller fish.
12:48Others, that it improves maneuverability.
12:51But when it's down, I can see how closely this fish shares a body plan with Cifactinus.
12:58It's just this streamlined, tubular shape, built for speed.
13:02Very characteristic shaped tail, like a bit of aeronautical engineering.
13:06It's almost identical to the giant fossil tail.
13:11So too are the pectoral fins.
13:14But that's where the similarities end.
13:18Cifactinus had jaws that could bite fish like this in half.
13:23Cifactinus was the biggest fish of this general body design that's ever lived.
13:26It grew up to about 20 feet long.
13:3485 million years ago, Cifactinus hunted open waters for fast-swimming fish as big as I am.
13:42And those prey fish had to be fast.
13:46Because in the open ocean, there's nowhere to hide.
13:49In terms of speed, size, and hardware, Cifactinus has to be up there as one of the greatest river monsters that's ever lived.
14:08But one prehistoric Leviathan grew to three times its length, and with monsters, size counts for a lot.
14:19And there's one modern-day behemoth sharing these waters with the sailfish, which can give me a sense of that scale.
14:26I've never tried to go after a fish this big, and I'm starting to wonder if I should.
14:37A dark shadow betrays a giant beneath the surface.
14:43Emerging from the gloom is not a whale, but a whale shark, the largest fish on the planet today.
15:01That thing is just massive.
15:06It's a good 20-foot long.
15:11But that's a small one.
15:12They grow to about twice that length.
15:15That is the size and weight of the school bass.
15:20But compared with what came before, the whale shark is small fry.
15:26Incredible.
15:27Huge as these things are.
15:28Even a fully grown one is smaller than the biggest fish that ever lived.
15:35That was about the size of a train car.
15:43This prehistoric shadowy beast has to be a contender for the greatest river monster ever.
15:50It patrolled our planet's waters long before giants like whale sharks, or whales, came on the scene.
15:58The sheer scale of the biggest ever river monster is something that can only be appreciated outdoors.
16:07Normally when I go to the beach, I'm there to bring in a monster.
16:11I never get to play in the sand.
16:12Today, I'm going to create my own life-size image of this contender for the ultimate river monster.
16:21From the tip of the snout to the end of its tail, we're talking more than 50 feet.
16:26So you could line me up eight times along its length.
16:36And at up to 12 feet long, you could line up two of me along each fin.
16:41This fish was like a giant ocean glider.
16:46Then there's its enormous mouth.
16:49It had a huge gape.
16:52I could pretty much walk into its mouth.
16:55But I wouldn't find any savage fangs in there.
16:59This giant ate plankton like the largest whales do today.
17:03Long before whales came on the scene, Lidzikthis was the first plankton-eating leviathan.
17:14No bony skeleton fish has ever grown near this size again.
17:26It may have topped 20 tons, yet it flew through prehistoric oceans like a great glider.
17:36And once Lidzikthis vanished, it would be many millions of years before any other plankton-feeder
17:42approached its phenomenal size.
17:49There's no denying that the Lidzikthis is an unsurpassed giant.
17:54But despite its monstrous size, I think the ultimate river monster has to be a predator.
18:01A deadly hunter.
18:04That still leaves Xifactinus as the strongest contender so far.
18:09But I've just found out that one of the most feared freshwater fish alive today, the piranha,
18:16had a giant, even more horrific, prehistoric relative.
18:23Enter Mega Piranha.
18:25My hunt for the greatest river monster that ever lived has unearthed a sinister ambush predator, an aquatic leviathan, and a fanged torpedo.
18:35Now I've discovered evidence for what might be my most bloodthirsty contender so far.
18:49These photographs show a unique and very disturbing fossil from the banks of the Rio Paraná in Argentina.
19:05It's part of a fish's jaw with three teeth.
19:07Based on the size and curvature of this jaw fragment, its owner was a giant piranha three feet long.
19:18If it was swimming alongside me, it would extend from my head to my waist.
19:24And if the Mega Piranha shared the aggressive pack hunting behavior of these guys,
19:31then the Mega Piranha is a truly terrifying candidate for the baddest river monster of all time.
19:39But with nothing else to go on, how can I bring this beast to life?
19:44I'm going to scale up the piranha's body to match scientists' estimates of Mega Piranha.
19:57I've also had the piranha skull laser scanned, then scaled up and 3D printed.
20:02The biggest piranha that's ever lived, with the deadliest smile I've ever seen.
20:16This could take a hand off, and that's just for starters.
20:21I can scarcely begin to imagine what a pack of hungry Mega Piranhas might be capable of.
20:27Even a school of red-bellied piranhas, the most feared fish in the Amazon today,
20:40wouldn't stand a chance against Mega Piranha.
20:57But we only have a single solitary fossil for this entire species.
21:06We don't really know anything about its behavior.
21:11If it was a pack hunter, then I pity anything else in the water.
21:16But not all piranhas hunt in packs.
21:19So despite its horrific teeth, I'm going to park this one until more evidence turns up.
21:24Which is exactly what has happened with another fiercely armed prehistoric predator.
21:31I've heard from a scientist who's just solved a fiendish, century-old puzzle
21:38about a much bigger, stranger and possibly more deadly contender.
21:42This is an announcement from more than a hundred years ago of a great discovery by a Russian scientist,
21:52Alexander Karpinski.
21:54And this is the strange fossil at the heart of the puzzle.
21:58At first sight, this fossil looks like the familiar ammonite.
22:02But in Karpinski's fossil, these are teeth.
22:10Karpinski named the mystery fish helicoprion, which means spiral saw.
22:17To put that into more modern language, let's call it the buzz saw killer.
22:21To build a better picture of this killer contender, I'm heading to Idaho, where these weird weapons keep turning up.
22:32The site of this phosphate mine is now more than 600 miles from the coast.
22:36But once it was at the bottom of the sea of Phosphoria, a shallow, virtually landlocked sea, which was home to a population of helicoprion.
22:49And last year, Dr. Leif Tapanila from Idaho State University solved the century-old mystery of how these lethal blade spirals were used.
22:58By analyzing a unique and now priceless specimen.
23:05So that is it.
23:07That is the fossil.
23:09Looking at this, the first thing I think you think of is, it looks like a saw blade.
23:15But this fossil isn't unique for what's on the surface, but for what lies beneath.
23:21Dr. Tapanila used CT x-rays to scan the fossil and revealed, for the very first time, the cartilage jaws that held the bizarre tooth whirl.
23:34The next step was to bring these jaws to life with 3D printing.
23:39And this is the result.
23:41This is an exact one-to-one replication of what's in the rock to scale.
23:48Life size.
23:49You're holding a helicoprion that no one ever has touched.
23:54The only thing that's missing from this now is the tooth whirl.
24:01This animal is meant to eat meat.
24:04But not a bone.
24:06Very little wear has been found on any teeth, suggesting these tooth whirls were designed to eat boneless prey, like squid or sharks.
24:14This whirl belonged to a buzz saw killer the size of a great white, but they got a lot bigger than that.
24:22We have spirals that go up over two and a half feet in diameter, which means the skull is now pushing us up to four feet and gives us an animal that reaches well past 20, 25, maybe even up to 30 feet for the largest helicoprions.
24:36With this knowledge, I'm able to imagine such a beast in action, perhaps on a moonlit night when ancient squid called bellum knights gather near the seabed to mate.
24:51Any fish armed with the seabed to mate?
24:52Any fish armed with the seabed to mate?
24:53any fish?
24:54If the었어 has done a great deal?
24:55Let's see.
24:56Okay.
24:57Maybe.
24:58I cwhhhh?
24:59Sure, I can Até piss go long
25:02if he does not общ but still you have one washes apart because I'm unable to burn away my
25:06If he can barely me be.
25:09Tee till now there is a Alan geometr繼續 curve in over opportunity for us this one.
25:13And what places I do now and such were real?
25:19Any fish armed with a weapon like this?
25:22has to rank very highly on the list of the deadliest River Monsters ever.
25:29For me, sheer size and incredible weaponry push the buzzsaw killer way ahead of the Zyvatonus.
25:42But now my challenge is to find out if there's anything bigger,
25:46badder, or even more terrifying
25:49that can possibly rival it.
26:04I'm on an epic mission around the world
26:07to hunt down the greatest river monster that ever lived.
26:13Let me take you on a journey back through time.
26:16If this line here represents today
26:21and this line here represents 400 million years ago,
26:30then all of the monsters that I'm hunting are somewhere in this space.
26:35Now, the vast majority of fish alive today are the so-called ray-finned fish.
26:40They've got very obvious bony rays in their fins.
26:44There are tens of thousands of these species,
26:48including piranhas, tigerfish, and catfish.
26:53This group is also home to Zyvatonus, the Leedsichthyse, and Megapiranha.
26:58But when you dig back into the fossil record,
27:04the number of ray-finned fish steadily diminishes
27:07until there are none around.
27:09The other significant group of fish around today
27:12are the sharks and their relatives.
27:18Sharks originated significantly further back than the ray-finned fish.
27:23This was the era of the eel shark and the buzzsaw killer.
27:29But there was another group of fish.
27:32They were on the scene for more than 50 million years.
27:36But then they all became extinct.
27:38There are no descendants alive today.
27:42These were the placoderms, or plate skins.
27:47Ancient armoured fish that started a monumental arms race.
27:51Not only were their heads encased in bony armour,
27:55but these were also the prehistoric fish
27:58that pioneered and perfected biting jaws.
28:02And one armoured fish grew into a gargantuan, bone-crunching giant.
28:07The Dunkolosteus.
28:09And this is how big its head armour was.
28:14Somehow I have to figure out
28:16whether this long-extinct beast
28:18is the greatest river monster that ever lived.
28:29There's only one living fish I know
28:31that even approaches the ancient ancestry,
28:34giant size, and armour plating of the Dunkolosteus.
28:37It lurks in the dramatic landscape
28:41of Canada's Fraser Canyon
28:43in the wilds of British Columbia.
28:46But fishing here is extremely challenging.
28:49This is tremendously deep, powerful, turbulent water.
28:53And even though I've been fishing a long time,
28:55I have to remind myself that it's possible
28:57for creatures to live and hunt in water like this.
29:00Who knows what could be down
29:01at the bottom of this water.
29:03Yeah, so we're all set.
29:09Baits are down.
29:11Just waiting there.
29:15Below me, these churning waters
29:18plunge into more than 150 foot of darkness.
29:23Because of the current,
29:24there's a certain amount of line movement
29:26and rod movement,
29:27but when a fish takes one of those baits,
29:30it should be fairly unmistakable.
29:38Yeah.
29:48That's a good size, I think.
29:51Let's do that.
29:53I'm going back millions of years
30:05to unearth the greatest river monster
30:07of all time.
30:10In Canada's Fraser Canyon,
30:12I'm searching for the only armoured giant alive today
30:15that can shed light on what could be
30:17my strongest contender so far.
30:20Here we go, chance to get a little bit of line back.
30:39Yak.
30:43I think it might be
30:44approaching the surface.
30:47Here we go, here we go, here we go, here we go.
30:50Yep, here we go.
30:56There it is, there it is.
30:57It's a 140-pound white sturgeon,
31:01the largest fish in North American rivers.
31:04Sturgeon belong to the most ancient group
31:06of ray-finned fish around today,
31:08and they're incredibly long-lived.
31:10184 and a half.
31:12That's just over six foot, isn't it?
31:14Heavy fish.
31:15Two of us struggling to hold this up briefly,
31:17but by sturgeon standards, this isn't big.
31:19They grow up to three times the length of this.
31:23Hard to believe.
31:25That's around the same size range as the bone crusher.
31:30The sturgeon's bony plates are unusual in living fish,
31:34and its body helps me imagine the strength and power
31:38of the bone crusher's body.
31:39It really is a strange-looking beast,
31:41but back when these started to emerge,
31:46this look was actually very common, armour plating,
31:48and this is one of the few remnants of that age
31:51that survives to this day.
31:54This sturgeon has given me living clues
31:57to a lost, armoured predator.
32:01It's going.
32:03It's going.
32:04But to find the last piece of the puzzle,
32:07I'm heading back to the U.S.,
32:09to the Cleveland Museum of Natural History,
32:12to come face-to-face
32:15with the very first ocean-going apex predator,
32:19the Dunkolosteus.
32:20And this is it.
32:37This is Dunkolosteus.
32:40And I have to say,
32:41I'm having a bit of trouble believing
32:43that this was actually a fish.
32:44It's unlike anything I've caught or seen
32:47or anything that's alive on the planet today.
32:51Based on the remains of close relatives,
32:54experts here think the Bone Crusher
32:56reached lengths of around 20 feet.
33:01And you just can't fail
33:03to notice these huge fangs.
33:06They're not actually teeth,
33:08but sharpened, bare jawbones.
33:11It's estimated that the Bone Crusher
33:13could slam its jaws shut
33:15with a force of around 8,000 pounds per square inch
33:19inside five hundredths of a second.
33:22Possibly the strongest fish bite ever
33:24and horrifically more powerful
33:26than any creature alive today.
33:29And what all of this tells us
33:31is that this wasn't a fish
33:32that merely grabbed prey,
33:34which had to be small enough to swallow whole.
33:36This could slice through flesh and bone,
33:40which meant it could go after much larger prey
33:42and bite clean mouthfuls out of them.
33:45And this took predation to a whole new level.
33:49and this could become Cornerfall.
33:49This piece is a authority.
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33:52and the type of treatment
33:53can Ruben theむ orunge sa nutritious
33:54control and toстеост and Menschen
33:55properties that may fall
33:58along with over the back of the river.
33:58And this could perform
34:00to simply throw it Worlds as a horse.
34:03Of course, we go there.
34:04You'll hear that—
34:06Hold on.
34:08I mean you're Scooby to smoke
34:11for success.
34:12You know you're well Vietnam,
34:13but I know you're well
34:15aren't sure.
34:15And you're welcome back
34:16As a contender for the ultimate prehistoric river monster,
34:29the bone crusher is hitting hard.
34:32But there's one more group of fish with even more formidable roots.
34:38The armored fish weren't the only other group of ancient fish
34:42thriving back here in prehistory.
34:46There were also the lobe fins.
34:51They are still hanging on by a thread.
34:56There's only a handful left, and the most famous is the coelacanth.
35:01It was thought to be extinct until one was found in the Indian Ocean in the 1930s.
35:09When it was first found, the coelacanth was nicknamed Old Forelegs
35:14because of its strange, fleshy paired fins, which look like simple limbs.
35:20It's a nickname that's very apt because way back in prehistory,
35:25some lobe fins branched off to eventually become all-modern-day four-limbed vertebrates,
35:33including us.
35:35And one prehistoric lobe fin cousin was a gargantuan heavyweight,
35:42a 23-foot, four-ton river monster.
35:46The rhizodont, a predatory freshwater fish the size and weight of a killer whale.
35:55330 million years ago, they hunted lakes and rivers in Scotland.
36:04The first time I came to the Hunterian Museum in Glasgow, it was to see the plesiosaur,
36:13the reptile some believe is behind the biggest aquatic monster myth of all time, Loch Ness.
36:21But I've heard that massive rhizodont teeth found near here leave the plesiosaurs' deadly hardware in the dust.
36:30Rhizodont means rooted tooth, and you can clearly see from where the enamel ends
36:38that fully half of this weapon was buried in the jawbone.
36:45This tusk was clearly designed to drive into flesh and bone and rip prey apart.
36:51Now, the size of the teeth suggests large prey.
36:55And at 23 feet long, this fish had more than enough muscle to take on anything else in the water.
37:04But apart from its huge tusks and fangs,
37:07most of its remains are the bony scales that made up a suit of full-body armour.
37:15There's no fish alive today that comes anywhere near the rhizodont's size, appearance and aggression.
37:22But in Australia, there is a river monster that does.
37:28The estuarine crocodile.
37:31To complete this nightmarish picture, I'll stare into the jaws of death.
37:37To bring the gargantuan rhizodont to life.
37:40My worldwide hunt for the biggest, baddest river monster of all time has finally brought me to the rhizodont.
37:58The size of a killer whale and armed with 10-inch tusks, no freshwater fish comes close to the rhizodont's scale and power.
38:09But the world's largest reptile does.
38:12His missing limbs are the price a top predator pays to stay at the top.
38:27At 18 feet long, chopper is three times my length.
38:32But the giant rhizodont could have been another five feet longer.
38:36I'm just trying to sort of calm myself down a little bit and get into proper observation mode.
38:49This giant aquatic predator deploys the same ambush strategy as the rhizodont.
38:55And the power of that strike is rooted in the tail.
39:02It's half the body length.
39:03So on an 18-foot animal like this, you've got a 9-foot tail and that's just solid muscle.
39:09It works in the same way as a fish's tail and it's all about propulsion.
39:14Judging by size alone, the rhizodont's massive tail must have packed more than twice the croc's muscle power.
39:21It's uncomfortably close view. I'm getting off the teeth and jaw of this animal.
39:28These crocs have the strongest recorded bite of any animal alive today.
39:34Close to 4,000 pounds per square inch for a beast this size.
39:38A 23-foot, 4-ton rhizodont might pack more than double that.
39:47Chopper has given me a visceral insight into the awesome killer potential of this prehistoric fish.
39:55I'm starting to think the rhizodont could even out bite the bone crusher.
40:01It's time to put this gargantuan fish in context in Scotland, where it terrorized lakes and rivers 330 million years ago.
40:14My journey halfway around the world has given me the final information I needed to picture this river monster's general body plan and size.
40:25Now, I'm trying to imagine the world that that beast lived in.
40:34Millions of years before solid ice carved out the lochs,
40:39rhizodont stalked prey as big as a man in murky, slow-flowing waters.
40:44The
41:07At the end of my search for the greatest river monster of all time,
41:21it's a very close contest between the Bone Crusher and the Rhizodont.
41:27But I now know where I'd place my bet.
41:31So for me, there's no question. The Rhizodont is the ultimate prehistoric river monster.
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