Prehistory is full of creatures that could pass for fantastic; mammoths, sabre-toothed cats, dinosaurs and millions of others. The problem is, you might think of prehistoric human society as boring. The solution? Medieval Prehistory. Medieval prehistory involves vaguely prehistoric plant and animal life, or climate and environmental conditions, with knights, castles, and princesses coexisting. Doesn't necessarily have to be set in Medieval Europe or a Fantasy Counterpart Culture to it, but it does have to involve a pre-industrial society. So Ancient Grome and Ancient Africa or even Mayincatec etc. are permitted. Stone Punk which usually involves a more modern-type society, is an entirely different trope. Subtrope of Anachronism Stew (though usually technically does not fit under that heading due to being set in a secondary universe) and often Alternate History or Historical Fantasy, usually based on the premise that the asteroid did not wipe out the dinosaurs or that somehow other wildlife managed to survive up until the medieval era or something involving Time Travel. Don't expect the wildlife to live in the areas they did in reality. Related to Dinosaurs Are Dragons and often overlaps with Fantasy Kitchen Sink. Not to be confused with 1 Million B.C., which involves stereotypical stone-age 'cavemen' living alongside creatures such as dinosaurs, or Prehistoria, its video game equivalent. Can contain elements of The Dark Times and The Time of Myths, or Ambiguous Time Period.
- Marvel 1602 has dinosaurs in Elizabethan America. Explained by Neil Gaiman (though not in story) as being because the Savage Land is bigger in this version of the Marvel Universe.
- 10,000 BC, has a pyramid-building culture using mammoths as beasts of burden.
- The B-movie Aztec Rex has the Conquistadors battling a Tyrannosaurus rex in a Mayincatec setting.
- A Song of Ice and Fire
- The series has mammoths, direwolves and dwarf elephants. A number of more elusive creatures have also been theorised to be based on prehistoric creatures also e.g. that the 'unicorns' of Skagos were really the extinct elasmotherium, or that the 'giants' are really an extinct species of ape, the Gigantopithecus.
- The irregular 'winters' could also represent shorter versions of glacial periods rather than actual seasons.
- A small element of The Lord of the Rings uses this. The Dr˙edain west of Gondor differ greatly from the normal humans, and even from the nonhuman races, and it has been suggested that they are actually Neanderthals. Though not explicitly so, creatures like the Műmakil and Wargs could be seen as exaggerations of mastodons and dire wolves respectively. Justified as according to Word of God it is set in the Time of Myths in the distant past of earth.
- The Garrett, P.I. novels, gumshoe-style mysteries set in a fantasy-world city, count both dinosaurs (thunder lizards) and assorted Pleistocene mammals among their Verse's typical fauna.
- A few times in The Elenium, the villains use time portals to make enemies from the prehistoric past attack the protagonists. These include a Tyrannosaurus rex and a hoard of "dawn men" (the common ancestor of humans and trolls in this 'verse).
- The Conan the Barbarian franchise counts as an example, being set in a prehistoric ater-earth.
- Similarly Lyonesse and its sequel Green Pearl take place in a pre-Migration Period world with fantasy elements and a vaguely medieval culture.
- Dungeons & Dragons has stats for dinosaurs, dire wolves (among other "dire" beasts), mastodons, and megalodons. Plus several others. Though whether or not they're actually part of the setting depends on the campaign.
- The Hollow World facet of the Mystara D&D setting is home to several classical- or Dark Ages-era civilizations, existing alongside vast tracts of dinosaur-populated wilderness.
- Skyrim has sabre-toothed cats and mammoths as well as vaguely medieval humans.
- World of Warcraft is a Fantasy Kitchen Sink setting with many medieval and Tolkienesque elements. Many creatures resemble or are directly based on prehistoric animals: there are raptors, sabretooth cats, woolly rhinos and mammoths; the kodo beast resembles a brontothere and the plainstrider look like a terror bird. Also, there is Un'Goro crater, a Lost World filled with pterosaurs, stegosaurs and Devilsaurs (which are, essentially, Tyrannosaurus rex).
- Age of Conan has mammoths and wooly rhinos along with civilized humans. It takes place in the Hyborian Age.
- The Empire of Blood in The Order of the Stick has civilized humans and dinosaurs coexisting.
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