What Is the Largest Land Mammal That Ever Lived?
The largest mammal still alive today is the blue whale, which can grow to more than 30 metres long. This immense whale lives underwater, of course. So what about its giant counterparts above ground? Which land mammal is the biggest of them all?
The African elephant is currently the world’s largest living land mammal. An adult specimen can be over 3.7 metres tall and 5 metres long, weighing in at 7 tonnes. While this is very impressive, it is still not the biggest land mammal ever. That species is now extinct.
The largest land mammal ever?
Paraceratherium is a species of Eurasian giant rhinoceros with no horn and a long giraffe-like neck. It lived from 30 to 16.6 million years ago. It is estimated that an adult had a shoulder height of almost 5 metres, the creature was about 7.4 metres long and it weighed about 17 tonnes. The white rhinoceros - the largest surviving species of rhinoceros - seems very small in comparison: it "only" grows to a length of 4.2 metres and weighs just 3,600 kg.
Major uncertainty
Despite these impressive dimensions, not all scientists agree that the Paraceratherium was the largest land mammal ever. This is because the fossil record is incomplete, making it impossible to say for certain how large these prehistoric rhinos might really have been. There is also strong competition from other extinct titans, such as the Palaeoloxodon and the European mastodon.
The former was a species of elephant with straight tusks that lived between 700,000 and 50,000 years ago. According to a 2016 study, the Palaeoloxodon stood 4.5 metres tall at the shoulder and could weigh up to 22 tonnes. That estimate, however, is based solely on the discovery of part of a femur. The bones and huge tusks of the European mastodon have also been found, suggesting that they were huge animals weighing 15 to 16 tonnes, with a shoulder height of about 4.1 m.
The largest animal
Aside from this debate, none of these heavyweights even come close to the largest animals that ever walked the earth: the sauropods or “long-necked dinosaurs”. Once again there is debate over which was the largest species, but they were certainly larger than any mammals. Patagotitan, for example, was more than 30 metres long and must have weighed more than 50 tonnes. Not even the giant rhinoceros, let alone our modern giant, the African elephant, can compete with this.