Scientists find ‘prehistoric killing machine’ was a speed demon



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This reconstruction shows an Anteosaurus slaughtering a herbivorous Moschognathus.

Alex Bernardini (@SimplexPaleo)

Dinosaurs have all the glory, but there were fantastic beasts roaming the planet long before dinosaurs arrived. One of these animals, the big-jawed Anteosaurus, was thought to be slow, but new research shows it was likely a vicious and efficient hunter.

The University of the Witwatersrand in Johannesburg, South Africa, described the Anteosaurus as “a fierce hunter-killer” in a statement Wednesday.

The hippo-sized Anteosaurus was a dinocephalic, which the university describes as “mammal-like reptiles.” They flourished in Africa around 260 million years ago, but died 30 million years before the first dinosaurs.

Previous research on the Anteosaurus suggested that the animal was so heavy and sluggish that it perhaps should have lived in water. The Wit University team created a 3D reconstruction of an Anteosaurus skull and discovered surprising new data about its brain, body parts, and likely hunting skills on land. It wasn’t a slowpoke.

Here’s how an Anteosaurus skull compares to a human skull.

Wits University

“By creating the most complete reconstruction of an Anteosaurus skull to date, we found that overall, the Anteosaurus nervous system was optimized and specialized to hunt quickly and strike quickly, unlike what the ‘we used to believe, “paleontologist Ashley Kruger said.

Kruger was co-author of an article on Anteosuaurus published online last month in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica. The study shows how computer reconstructions can change what we know about long-extinct animals.

“Even though Anteosaurus lived 200 million years before the famous Tyrannosaurus rex dinosaur, co-author Julien Benoit said, Anteosaurus was certainly not a ‘primitive’ creature, and was nothing short of a powerful one. prehistoric killing machine. “

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