With lengthy fangs and a massive skull, a giant salamander-like creature was likely the terror of polar swamps 40 million years before the dinosaurs appeared.
A massive, fanged creature with a head shaped like a toilet seat lurked in swamps near the edge of the world 280 million years ago, long before the first dinosaurs appeared, new research has found. Now, scientists who made the surprising discovery of its fossils in Namibia and Brazil want to know why the archaic salamander-like predator seemed to flourish millions of years after its relatives near the equator went extinct.
“It’s really, really surprising that Gaiasia is so archaic. It was related to organisms that went extinct probably 40 million years prior.” An unrivaled predator Part of the reason Gaiasia is so surprising to researchers is because it was so large and dominant. “There are some other more archaic animals still hanging on 300 million years ago, but they were rare, they were small, and they were doing their own thing,” Pardo said.
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