A remarkable new fossil discovery is reshaping our view of the predators that ruled Earth long before the dinosaurs appeared.
A team of palaeontologists from the Federal University of Santa Maria, Brazil, have discovered and described a brand-new species of pseudosuchian archosaur from southern Brazil. The crocodile-like predator was found in rocks dated to the Middle Triassic ( around 240 million years ago), making it as old as the earliest dinosaurs.
Named Tainrakuasuchus bellator after the latin for “pointed tooth” and “warrior”, this newly discovered species belongs to a large group of scaly animals known as pseudosuchians, or crocodile-line archosaurs. Prior to the rise of the dinosaurs, pseudosuchians like Tainrakuasuchus ruled many of Earth’s ecosystems and were amongst its fiercest predators.
How big was Tainrakuasuchus?
At approximately 2.4m in length and weighing 60kg, Tainrakuasuchus was far from the largest pseudosuchian from the Middle Triassic; that particular accolade goes to the rhino-sized Mambawakale from Tanzania. However, what it lacked in size it more than made up for in speed.
What did Tainrakuasuchus look like?
Based on the handful of fossils discovered as part of this latest study, researchers believe Tainrakuasuchus had a long, flexible neck and agile body - adaptations for chasing down fast, slippery prey. Its jaws were also lined with sharp, recurved teeth that would have allowed it to grip onto the flesh of whatever it was hunting.
“This animal was an active predator, but despite its relatively large size, it was far from the largest hunter of time with the same ecosystem home to giants as big as 7m-long,” said lead author Rodrigo Temp Müller in an associated press release. “Pseudosuchia were a diverse group of animals capable of tackling robust prey, as well as small hunters specialised in catching swift animals.”
Despite superficially resembling a dinosaur, Tainrakuasuchus belongs to the other branch of the reptile family tree that includes modern crocodiles and alligators, making it a distant ancestor of these living animals.
Like modern crocodiles and alligators, Tainrakuasuchus’ back was covered in bony plates known as osteoderms. These acted like armour, protecting Tainrakuasuchus from larger pseudosuchians.
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The discovery of Tainrakuasuchus is particularly important as it highlights just how complex this particular ecosystem in southern Brazil was prior to the rise of the dinosaurs.
“Tainrakuasuchus’ discovery represents the complexity of the ecosystem at the time, with different pseudosuchia species - varying in sizes and hunting strategies - occupying specific ecological niches,” explained Müller.
“Tainrakuasuchuswould have lived in a region bordering a vast, arid desert - the same setting where the first dinosaurs emerged. It shows that, in what is now southern Brazil, reptiles had already formed diverse communities adapted to various survival strategies.”
According to Müller, Tainrakuasuchus is closely related to a pseudosuchian from Tanzania known as Mandasuchus tanyauchen. This particular species also lived during the Middle Triassic, before the emergence of the Atlantic Ocean and back when South America and Africa were part of the same supercontinent, Pangea.
The pseudosuchians were, for a time, the most dominant animals on Earth and occupied many of the same niches that dinosaurs would go on to fill millions of years later. In a way, they were the first “terrible lizards”.
