7 Terrifying Prehistoric Creatures (that are still around)

[Vulpine]

Still, I have some trouble believing that shark with the buzz-saw mouth EVER existed - I think they just made that one up.

Yeah, but just imagine it did exist, and hid somewhere deep in the ocean...then arose to attack Debbie Gibson.  Next on Syfy...Buzzshark.

[Rob]

I don't know about prehistoric but saw this today (the photo that is not the real thing!)

Venomous caterpillar

[Bob Lovecraft]

Looks like a normal caterpillar wearing a Lady Gaga costume.

Bob

[Inner Prop]

Yowza!  That slime mold is sumtin else!

I wrote a short story called "Northern Faerie Ring" that you can listen to on Cthulhupodcast.  I envisioned the same sort of thing.  In that story I reference a story I never finished about a fungus that shaped itself like a man and went after some hunters in Alaska.  Now I'm inspired to finish that story.

Thank you slime mold!

[TransconaSlim]

http://www.geekologie.com/2009/06/zomg-what-was-that-sewer-creat.php

[Bob Lovecraft]

Gee, thanks for the link, TS. That's going to stay with me for a while. I can't decide if those things looked like ambulatory testicles, or living booger/fungus creatures.

Bob (Again wishing for a vomit smiley on this board)

[TransconaSlim]

Gee, thanks for the link, TS. That's going to stay with me for a while. I can't decide if those things looked like ambulatory testicles, or living booger/fungus creatures.

Bob (Again wishing for a vomit smiley on this board)

I work in a super market in the meat department, and after seeing that video I had a nightmare in which I was on a clean up shift and found those in the drain, sustaining itself on the blood of the butchered product. 

I've always intended to write it as a short story, but I have no skill for that sort of thing.

[Bob Lovecraft]

Gee, thanks for the link, TS. That's going to stay with me for a while. I can't decide if those things looked like ambulatory testicles, or living booger/fungus creatures.

Bob (Again wishing for a vomit smiley on this board)

I work in a super market in the meat department, and after seeing that video I had a nightmare in which I was on a clean up shift and found those in the drain, sustaining itself on the blood of the butchered product. 

I've always intended to write it as a short story, but I have no skill for that sort of thing.

Now THAT is a great set-up for a ghoul story. I've worked at a grocery store, too and been in the meat department on many occasions during the day. I can just imagine ghouls, somewhere beneath the foundation, suckling at a crack in the pipe for blood, pushing and shoving each other out of the way to get their turn. Yep, I'm stealing that idea.

Bob

[Inner Prop]

Worst place I ever worked, a meat packaging facility at the University of Illinois.  It was bloody, sharp, deadly AND cold.

They have a machine that looks like a horizontal pile driver that they lower from the ceiling to kill the cows with a blow to the head.  Then they throw them in another machine that flails the hide off.

I had to clean out the flailing machine.  Ewww!

To bring it back on topic (sort of), man is a very recent innovation in the terrifying creature department.  We are the latest thing, building on aeons of development.

[TransconaSlim]

Gee, thanks for the link, TS. That's going to stay with me for a while. I can't decide if those things looked like ambulatory testicles, or living booger/fungus creatures.

Bob (Again wishing for a vomit smiley on this board)

I work in a super market in the meat department, and after seeing that video I had a nightmare in which I was on a clean up shift and found those in the drain, sustaining itself on the blood of the butchered product. 

I've always intended to write it as a short story, but I have no skill for that sort of thing.

Now THAT is a great set-up for a ghoul story. I've worked at a grocery store, too and been in the meat department on many occasions during the day. I can just imagine ghouls, somewhere beneath the foundation, suckling at a crack in the pipe for blood, pushing and shoving each other out of the way to get their turn. Yep, I'm stealing that idea.

Bob

0000

Here's an idea! How about we have a writing challenge!?   The rules would be simple: write a short horror story that is set in a supermarket.  I'd push myself to write my piece, and then we'd share them. 

If anyone wants to do it, post here if your interested and I can make a new thread. 


0000

I've had other frightening dreams about the meat dept.  I once had a dream where my pregnant supervisor had a baby on top of the chopping block, and the butcher kept on cutting when the baby got mixed up with the chuck.  I used to make ground beef, and I was always freaked out when looking into the grinder, 'cause I always thought there was going to be an eye staring up out at me, just for a second before it was reground.  Cosmic alienation to workplace alienation I guess...

[LambethWarp]

Have we had Prototaxites yet?

"The genus Prototaxites (play /?pro?t??tæks?ti?z/) describes terrestrial organisms known only from fossils dating from the Silurian and Devonian, approximately 420 to 370 million years ago. Prototaxites formed large trunk-like structures up to 1 metre (3 ft) wide, reaching 8 metres (26 ft) in height,[1] made up of interwoven tubes just 50 micrometres (0.0020 in) in diameter. Whilst traditionally very difficult to assign to an extant group of organisms, current opinion is converging to a fungal placement for the genus. It might have had an algal symbiont, which would make it a lichen rather than a fungus in the strict sense." (from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Prototaxites)

So basically, ultra-prehistoric (pre-dinosaur) eight-metre-tall mushrooms. Or possibly lichens, but whatever. Pretty freakin' cool! Aside from the fact that fungi are inherently Lovecraftian anyway, the sheer size and immense age of these organisms links in rather beautifully with the ancient "fungal forests" mentioned in The Shadow Out Of Time, don't you think?

[Bob Lovecraft]

I've been wondering what a fungus forest would look like. That's a pretty good start. Thanks LambethWarp.

Bob

[Inner Prop]

What would a fungus forest eat?

No, not, "anything it wants."

I'm serious.  Fungus "eats" stuff, usually woody stuff.  Fungus grows in the forest or on your lawn eating the dead plant material.  If the whole forest is fungus then the food chain is broken.  That would be like a forest of lions.

[LambethWarp]

What would a fungus forest eat?

No, not, "anything it wants."

I'm serious.  Fungus "eats" stuff, usually woody stuff.  Fungus grows in the forest or on your lawn eating the dead plant material.  If the whole forest is fungus then the food chain is broken.  That would be like a forest of lions.

Not a forest only of fungi, but a forest in which fungi form the biggest "trees". There were terrestrial plants by this time as well, of course, but (it says in that Wiki article, anyway) the tallest true plants at the time were at the most about a metre tall. Plus lots of mosses and ferns and liverworts and other primitive greenery.

And if they were lichens - symbionts of fungi and algae - they could have derived at least some of their nutrients from photosynthesis.

[Bob Lovecraft]

OR, we assume that there are layer upon layer of rotting things underneath the great fungal growths. Much freakier that way.

Bob