Butcher Crocodile (Photo : Reuters)
Long before the Earth was terrorized by dinosaurs, a 9 feet, crocodile-like ancestor that carried blade-shaped teeth once ruled the planet. This gigantic being walked using its hind legs and lived by eating, armored reptiles and early mammals, approximately 231 million years earlier. Scientists were able to discover fossils of what was identified as the Carolina Butcher, Carnuflex carolinensis, that apparently has huge, snapping jaws.
This fierce predator's remains were recovered from North Carolina, in its Chatham Country's Pekin Formation. The Carolina Butcher has revealed that the crocodylomorphs, the crocodile ancestors, were at the top of the food chain during the later years of the Triassic period, when Earth was still a huge, single continent Pangea. The paleontologists from the North Carolina State University and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences had gathered parts of the huge animal's upper forelimb, skull, and spine.
The lead author of the research, Dr. Lindsay Zanno, said that their discovery of Earth's largest and earliest crocodylomorphs has provided new insights about the strongest terrestrial predators throughout Pangea. When it was still alive, Earth was a wet and warm equatorial region.
Fossils from this period were vital because it will show the crocodylomorphs and the theropod dinosaurs' earliest appearance. These groups have evolved during the Triassic period, but have managed to live until the modern years in the form of birds and crocodiles, the Value Walk reported.
The findings of the research were published in Scientific Reports journal, through the Eureka Alert online magazine.
