|
 Scientists on Thursday said they had unearthed fossils in North
Carolina of a big land-dwelling croc that lived about 231 million
years ago, walked on its hind legs and was a top land predator right
before the first dinosaurs appeared.
Transported back to the Triassic Period, what would a person
experience upon encountering this agile, roughly 9-foot-long (about
3 meter-long), 5-foot-tall (about 1.5 meter-tall) beast with a long
skull and blade-like teeth?
"Abject terror," said North Carolina State University paleontologist
Lindsay Zanno, who led the research published in the journal
Scientific Reports.
"Climb up the nearest tree," advised North Carolina Museum of
Natural Sciences paleontologist Vince Schneider.
The creature is named Carnufex carolinensis, meaning "Carolina
butcher," for its menacing features. It was a very early member of
the croc lineage and was unlike today's crocs. It was not aquatic
and not a quadruped, instead prowling on two legs in the warm
equatorial region that North Carolina was at the time.
It lived alongside armored plant-eating reptiles known as aetosaurs,
early mammal relatives and other fierce predators such as the large,
long-snouted, water-dwelling, four-legged phytosaurs.
Carnufex is one of the most primitive members of the broad category
of reptiles called crocodylomorphs, encompassing the various forms
of crocs that have appeared on Earth.
"As one of the earliest and oldest crocodylomorphs, Carnufex was a
far cry from living crocodiles. It was an agile, terrestrial
predator that hunted on land," Zanno said. "Carnufex predates the
group that living crocodiles belong to."
[to top of second column] |
The scientists unearthed portions of Carnufex's skull, spine and
forelimb parts from a Chatham County quarry. Then also created a
three-dimensional model of the skull, filling in the missing parts
with the more complete skulls of close relatives.
Carnufex lived just before the appearance of the first dinosaurs,
which started as modest creatures in the Triassic before becoming
Earth's dominant land animals. Zanno said Carnufex's discovery
underscores the notion that before dinosaurs became well established
in North America, such crocs and their cousins filled the large
predator roles.
While the dinosaur lineage eventually produced the world's largest
terrestrial predators, it was the crocs and their cousins that
typically were the Triassic tough guys. A group related to crocs
called rauisuchians included large four-legged land predators up to
25 feet (about 8 meters) in length or more.
(Reporting by Will Dunham; Editing by Sandra Maler)
[© 2015 Thomson Reuters. All rights
reserved.]
Copyright 2015 Reuters. All rights reserved. This material may not be published,
broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
 |
