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Message: <blockquote data-quote="radferth" data-source="post: 4976262" data-attributes="member: 5791">Thanks for not going with dire = ice age = extra spiky.  (Although I did have a book as a kid that referred to something called a dire bear.  I assume they meant a cave bear or short-faced bear).  My favorite example of dire silliness in the dire badger.  Wouldn't that be kinda like a wolverine?  Why, yes, it would.  (Stats are even nearly, but not quite identical).Some other random extinct animal facts, many from some old Dragon article:(I think these are right, but I may be misremembering some).1) Smilodons are very cool, but not any bigger that tigers or lions (maybe a hair smaller).2) Mammoths are not that much bulkier than African elephants, although they are much taller.3) A lot of extict ice-age animals actually survived quite a ways into our current thaw.  Mammoths were still alive on some islands in the north Atlantic a few thousand years ago.  (Can't remember if it was 4000 years ago, or 4000 B.C.).4) Australia had 20' monitor lizards as recently as 20,000 years ago.  Think of a double-sized Komodo dragon.5) Hyenadons were very early mammals that were a bit like a hyena.  In the much more recent past there were extra-large hyenas that weren't called dire hyenas, but it's probably a better name for them than hyenadon.6) Cape buffalo aren't extinct, but would be pretty good monsters to fight.  Has anyone seen stats for those?Folks have mentioned Irish deer, cave bear, short-faced bear, smilodons, and aurochs as the actual names for some big, extinct mammals.  I'd like to add spotted lion and titanothere as the real names (IIRC) for big, old lions and big, old rhinos.  Not sure how close they are to modern rhinos, but I think they are what the LotR movie-folks based the Grond-pulling beasts off of.  And I don't know how they know the lions were spotted.  Cave drawings, maybe?</blockquote>

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