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In the plastic film " 10,000 BC , " which open March 7 , a band of hunters adventure on an epic quest , overcoming prehistoric monster to terminate up at a commonwealth of God and pyramids .
The fantastic creatures depicted in the moving picture — from the giant carnivorous birds to saber - toothed cats and woolly mammoths — actually once exist . Whether they could have exist at 10,000 BC as shown is another narrative , although the ancient Egyptians might well have known of lanate mammoths .
Steven Strait as DLeh, fending off what may have been a slightly outsized rendition of the sabertooth cat in the epic adventure 10,000 B.C. by Warner Bros. Pictures and Legendary Pictures.
Here ’s a look at the moving picture ’s beasts from a scientific position .
Saber - toothed cats
The most famous of the saber - toothed cats wasSmilodon , a group of predators often dubbed saber - toothed tiger , although they were not in reality confining relatives of the New Panthera tigris . Ironically , Smilodonwas recently found to have had arelatively watery bite .
However , Smilodonlived solely in the Americas , while the movie " 10,000 BC " apparently takes place in the Old World . Still , other prehistoric felines were armed with deadly , extraordinarily prospicient canines . These included the " scimitar cat"Homotherium , a Leo - sized cat that live in both the New and Old Worlds .
Scimitar cats are thought to have died out in the Old World some 100,000 age ago before the beginning of the last Ice Age , but now there is some grounds they may in reality have hold out in Europe and peradventure Africa " until mayhap 30,000 or 40,000 years ago , and possibly a minute later , " say Ross MacPhee , curator of mammalogy at the American Museum of Natural History in New York , who did not confabulate for the motion-picture show .
The marauder in the film " 10,000 BC " are " significantly larger thanSmilodonorHomotheriumwere in life , " MacPhee noted . " What you see in the film seems to be at least twice the body distance of a modern tiger , which is a very large wolf indeed . "
Incidentally , a number of other beast with extraordinary canines existed , include a marsupial , Thylacosmilus , and a bobcat - sized carnivore dubbedHoplophoneus .
affright birds
The very name of these predatory animal evokes threat — " threat birds . " These giant , flightless carnivorous Bronx cheer — the prominent raspberry the world has ever meet — stand up to 10 feet high and could be armed with vicious beak a half - yard long .
Still , little terror bird are know mostly from the Americas . A terror - bird - like - thing is know from Germany , but " it lived more than 40 million years ago , " MacPhee said . " There ’s nothing like it in recent times from the Old World . "
Woolly mammoth
Mammoths begin disappear about 10,000 years ago , with the last dwelling on islands in the Arctic until 3,000 to 4,000 years ago .
Woollymammothswere actually smaller than often popularly depicted . " They were just 10 foot at the shoulder , maximal acme , " MacPhee said . " What makes them look so huge are their heads . They had big heads , and had large tusks than forward-looking elephant , but their trunk were relatively bantam . "
Intriguingly , in 1994 , a scientist in Israel revealed the ancient Egyptians may have known of woolly mammoths , with a wall painting of what might be a waist - sized mammoth found in a pharaoh ’s grave .
" There ’s clearly no forcible grounds of mammoths from the Nile Valley , " MacPhee enunciate . " Still , what they might actually have known about mammoths remains an owing mystery . "
