Meet the Large Crocodile That Dined on Dinosaurs

The end-Cretaceous was the age of the dinosaurs, an period populated by iconic prehistoric creatures like Ankylosaurus, Gallimimus, Triceratops, and Tyrannosaurus rex. Our favourite dinosaurs is perhaps the topic of toys, lunch containers, and blockbuster films, however they weren’t alone.

Dinosaurs shared the panorama with different creatures each massive and small, together with outsized croc-like predators with a style for dino meat. Information about these historical reptiles has been sparse as a result of their fossil information are incomplete. Most of what was identified got here from fragmented stays, largely partial mandibles, of different broad-snouted peirosaurids (a household of crocodile kin which lived on the Gondwana supercontinent earlier than the asteroid hit).

Now, a paper published in the journal PLOS One describes the invention of one of the well-preserved and informative peirosaurid crocodyliform fossils ever discovered.

Okay. atrox, the crocodile-like hypercarnivore that ate dinosaurs

The new species, dubbed Kostensuchus atrox was present in Argentine Patagonia, about 18 miles southwest of El Calafate. The formation dates to the late Cretaceous, about 70 million years in the past and options all kinds of plant and animal fossils. Paleontologists uncovered the cranium, jaws, and partial skeleton of Okay. atrox from a big rock concretion.

The startling completeness of the fossil revealed many options of broad-snouted peirosaurids for the primary time. The specimen options giant ziphodont tooth (laterally compressed, curved tooth with serrated edges), a broad oreinirostral (tall and domed) that is barely longer than half the cranium size, and cranium options that counsel the presence of highly effective temporal muscular tissues. Okay. atrox was constructed for biting.

The fossil beds the place Okay. atrox was discovered are a selected favourite of paleontologists as a result of they reveal the complexity of the end-Cretaceous ecosystem. Over the years, researchers have dug up pollen, fungal spores and different plant stays, fish, frogs, turtles, mammals, and reptiles. The dinosaurs uncovered from this web site embody giant titanosaurs, the terrifying Maip macrothorax, parankylosaurs, hadrosaurs, and extra.

Even in that crowded ecosystem, Okay. atrox virtually dominated the roost. It weighed in at 550 kilos and stretched practically 12 toes from tip to tail. While a few of the limbs and tail have been lacking from the fossil, scientists have been in a position to estimate the size and weight by evaluating the fossil to the skeletons of dwelling kin like caimain and alligators. While some trendy crocodilians are bigger, it was sufficient for Okay. atrox to carve out an area within the Patagonian late Cretaceous. Among identified predators within the area on the time, solely Maip was bigger.

Researchers observe that this measurement enlargement from extra diminutive ancestors aligns with a wider pattern in notosuchian clades (a subset of the Gondwanan crocodylomorphs) which acquired bigger all through the Cretaceous. The measurement improve has been linked with a transition from an omnivorous food regimen to a hypercarnivorous life-style. By 70 million years in the past, Okay. atrox had grown comparatively big and ascended to apex predator standing, snacking fortunately on something it may get its jaws round.

Its measurement, mixed with these lengthy, serrated tooth gave Okay. atrox the power to puncture and rip by means of the flesh of bigger prey together with the medium-sized dinosaurs of the day.

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