18 ene 2012
A fearsome fanged reptile that roamed the Earth about 265 million years ago - before the age of the dinosaurs - has been unearthed in southern Brazil by scientists.
The skull of the predator was dug up from a farm in the pampas plains of Rio Grande do Sul in southern Brazil, after scientists spotted a bare patch on Google Maps and flew over to investigate.
The dog-sized predator lived about 40 million years before the dinosaurs - and belonged to a family of reptiles that died out, leaving no descendants.
Pampaphoneus hunting a pareiasaur: The remains, found in Brazil, are of a predator that roamed the plains before the dinosaurs
The Pampaphonius skull found by Dr Julian Cisneros, with a drawing showing what the complete skull would have looked like. The predator would have stalked other animals
Named Pampaphoneus biccai, it was a dinocephalian - a member of the family of anteosaurs that looked like dinosaurs but died out before the dinosaurs arrived.
It would have been cold-blooded, using its powerful jaws to rip chunks off prey while still alive.
The pampas are the flatlands of south America, - and ‘phoneus’ is Greek for 'killer'. Although Pampaphoneus biccai was found in modern-day Brazil, it came from a time when all the continents were fused together into one land mass called Pangaea.
The family of creatures previously known to exist only in Russia, Kazakhstan, China and South Africa, but the latest discovery, described in Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences suggests the creature was more widespread.
Dr Julian Cisnero's team investigate a layer of fossil-bearing soil in Brazil
About the size of a large dog, Pampaphoneus biccai's large teeth would have been able to rip prey to shreds
Palaeontologist Dr Juan Carlos Cisneros, of the Federal University of Piaui in Teresina, Brazil, said: '
'This fossil is a member of the carnivorous Anteosaurs and provides evidence for Pangea-wide distribution of carnivorous dinocephalians.'
Ohter dinocephalians included the South African Anteosaurus magnificus and the Russian Titanophoneus potens which were the largest - more than 18ft long - terrestrial predators of the age known geologically as the Permian.
The researchers believe a barrier free connection would have allowed the beasts’ migration from Laurasia and Gondwana - the northernmost parts of Pangea - to the southern tip of the continent.
'This fossil is a member of the carnivorous Anteosaurs and provides evidence for Pangea-wide distribution of carnivorous dinocephalians.'
Ohter dinocephalians included the South African Anteosaurus magnificus and the Russian Titanophoneus potens which were the largest - more than 18ft long - terrestrial predators of the age known geologically as the Permian.
The researchers believe a barrier free connection would have allowed the beasts’ migration from Laurasia and Gondwana - the northernmost parts of Pangea - to the southern tip of the continent.
At the end of the Permian period virtually all life became extinct in an environmental catastrophe of a magnitude never seen before or since.
All over the world complex ecosystems were destroyed with only five per cent of species surviving what is now believed to be massive and prolonged volcanic eruptions that lasted for 500,000 years.
