Artistic Illustration of the old reptile Kostensuchus atrox
A fossil discovered in Patagon has revealed a reptile from the end of the Cretaceous, ancient relative of crocodiles, 3.5 meters long. He had his large, seriled teeth whose life was to destroy dinosaurs.
O Atrox cost search He lived about 70 million years ago; And it was probably such a formidable predator that archaeologists claims that comia dinosaurs to breakfast.
“Their great teeth had serrated edges like meat knives, which is a strong sign that this animal could tear muscles and bones, probably hunting dinosaurs from small to medium or other large prey,” Diego Pol from the National Council for Scientific and Technical Research in Buenos Aires, Argentina.
O Atrox cost searchwhich in life would have about 3.5 meters long and weighed about 250 kiloswas found in 2020 in southern Patagonia. The fossil included a very well preserved skull and parts of the predator skeleton.
Its gender name derives from the pathogonic wind known as cost and the Crocodile -headed Egyptian god known as Souchoswhere frightful It means fierce or rough in Greek.
This reptile lived at the end of the Cretaceous and belongs to a group of crocodile relatives known as crocodyliformes peirosaurídeosthat did not survive the extinction event 66 million years agowhich also eliminated most dinosaurs.
Unlike current crocodiles, which have long and flattened chips, the Cost search It had a high skull, wide and extremely robust“More robust than any living crocodile”, designed to exert a great strength, praises them.
Yours members were longer than those of modern crocodileswhich suggests that it was capable of moving more agilely on land.
This “predator of the whole” had more than 50 sharp and serrated teeth, some over 5 centimeters long. Pol reports that these teeth were not only used to grab, but also to cut the muscles, ” in one of the most powerful bites of your ecosystem”.
“These characteristics helped us put it as a top predator, coexisting with great carnivorous dinosaurs,” adds the corresponding author of the study on Wednesday in PLOS One.
