An enormous crocodile ancestor with blade-like teeth walked on two legs and was at the very top of North America's food chain 231 million years ago, according to a new study.
Named "Carolina Butcher" (Carnufex carolinensis), the newly discovered toothy beast reveals that predecessors of today's crocodiles — crocodylomorphs — were top predators in North America prior to the reign of dinosaurs.
Carolina Butcher, described in the latest issue of the journal Scientific Reports, lived up to its horror movie-style name.
"Carnufex lived in what is now North Carolina around the time the supercontinent Pangea was breaking apart," lead author Lindsay Zanno told Discovery News. "The skull of Carnufex is slender and long-snouted with dozens of blade-like teeth. For all practical purposes, this was an animal skillfully adapted for slicing flesh from the bones of its victims." Read more...
More about Dinosaurs, Us World, Fossils, Paleontology, and Archeology
from MashableDiscovery News
0 comments:
Post a Comment