Researchers have unearthed a giant “warrior” lizard that attacked Brazil 240 million years ago during the Triassic period, just before the dawn of dinosaurs. The discovery fills a gap in our understanding of the time before dinosaurs dominated the Earth and further highlights the connections between modern-day Africa and South America.
The armored reptile resembles a dinosaur, but is actually the ancestor of modern crocodiles. Scientists call the creature Táinracuascus bellator (meaning “point-toothed warrior crocodile”), a blend of Greek, Latin, and Guaraní, the language of Brazil’s indigenous people. The research team revealed their findings in a study published Nov. 13 in the Journal of Systematic Paleontology.
“This discovery helps clarify a key moment in the history of life that preceded the appearance of dinosaurs,” lead study author Rodrigo Temp Muller, a paleontologist at Brazil’s Federal University of Santa Maria, said in a statement.
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During the Triassic Period (252 to 201 million years ago), archosaurs dominated the land vertebrate world, and their name means “dominant reptiles” and are divided into two major groups. One group, Ornithoschia, evolved into birds and dinosaurs, and another group, Pseudoschia, gave rise to crocodiles such as modern crocodiles.
T. bellator belongs to Pseudostia. It was approximately 7.9 feet (2.4 meters) long and weighed 130 pounds (60 kilograms). It had a long neck and thin jaw with sharp teeth. This type of pseudonesian (called the poposauridae) is rarely found in South America, the researchers noted.
Researchers discovered a partial skeleton of T. bellator, including the lower jaw, spine and pelvis, during excavations in the Brazilian city of Dona Francisca in May.
Reptiles’ backs are covered with bony plates called osteoderms, which modern crocodiles also have.
“This animal was an active predator, but despite its relatively large size, it was far from the largest hunter of its time; giants up to 7 meters lived in the same ecosystem.” [23 feet] Muller, who led the team of paleontologists who unearthed T. bellator, said that “despite the diversity of pseudosuthids, they are still poorly understood. Fossils of some lineages, such as poposaurids, are “extremely rare” in the fossil record.
T. bellator is closely related to another person found in Tanzania, he said. Discovered in 1933, Mandasuchus tanyauchen lived about 245 million years ago, when Africa and South America were both part of the supercontinent Pangea.
“At that time, the continents were still unified and life was able to disperse freely across regions that are now separated by oceans,” Muller said. “As a result, the Brazilian and African faunas share several common elements and reflect intertwined evolutionary and ecological histories.”
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