Man, can you even imagine the kind of "back in my day" stories you'd hear from someone who actually lived about a quarter of the Earth's age
"You kids don't know how good you have it! Toys? Back in my day we didn't even have a stick to splash in puddles with. Before the Carboniferous, all we had were ferns and those don't make good sticks to splash with! And you always had to look out for velociraptors. Some of the smaller buggers would just zip by and run off with your bloody leg if you didn't look out. "
"And it reminds me, you kids always complaining about having to eat your veggies. Oh, what we wouldn't have given for some veggies like those instead of fern for breakfast, lunch and dinner! Ever eaten a fern, kid? Makes you wish some beans and carrots would evolve already, but nooo, they had to take their bloody time."
"And always complaining about having to walk to school through snow, uphill both ways. Oh what we wouldn't have given for some snow to walk through! You know how hot it got in the Eocene? 'Course you don't. It was a whole bloody 12 Celsius hotter, that's how hot. And on top of that, the bloody continental drift had put us right on the bloody equator at the time."
"And mosquitoes? You call those mosqutoes worth complaining about? Wimps. You should have seen what we used to call insects back in my day. Bloody mosquitoes back then could suck a cow dry, if cows had evolved yet. And there was this dragonfly THIS wide!" (Holds hands 2.5 ft apart.) "You had to hand it to the bugger that it ate the other insects, but you'd pray it never goes hungry because it was big enough to mug you and eat your lunch!"
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It could kill things 15 times its weight.IIRC, Metuselah was one of the righteous few who still walked the earth and was supposed to die before the flood was to come.
.Well, that sonofabitch still weighed only 1 pound or so. So I doubt it could carry off something much bigger than a Chihuahua. Could probably bite the head off a cat, though.
Now if you want something that would be a more unholy terror from the past, take the aptly named Terror Bird. Think a nastier ostrich, sorta, or those tamable birds from WoW. The largest ones found stood 10 ft tall (3m) and just the _skull_ was 2.5 ft long, plus a sharp and sturdy 1.5 ft beak. It was also a nasty carnivore.
Think, sorta, poor man's T-Rex with feathers
Of course, those didn't fly.
For an unholy terror that flies, try Haast's Eagle, which actually lived until 1400 BC or so. It weighed anywhere betwee 20 and 33 lbs or so (with the females more towards the lower part and the males more towards the highest part of that interval), had "only" 9 ft or so wingspan (plus/minus 1 ft or so), and attacked by diving at 50mph with its talons first. Had reinforced leg bones and hips to resist that kind of impact too. And we're really talking about an impact similar to being hit by the stereotypical cartoon anvil dropped off a cliff
Or for a less deadly terror from above, take the recent find of an ancient kinda seagull with a 17 ft wing span. If you think a pigeon crapping on you on your windshield is bad, umm, yeah, you get what I'm talking about
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If you're looking at impossible things in the OT, I think ages are the least of your worries.
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