Fossil Discovery: Pampaphoneus Biccai, Powerful Pre-Dinosaur Predator, Unearthed in Brazil

Jakarta –

Scientists discovered fossil from predatory creatures that lived before the era dinosaur powerful. The fossil is 265 million years old and was found in Brazil, which is 40 million years before dinosaurs became the most powerful predators on Earth.

This skull was later identified as Pampaphoneus biccai. Fossil It was found in almost intact condition. It measured almost 36 cm and was found together with skeletal bones near São Gabriel in Southern Brazil.

Pampaphoneus belongs to the early therapsid clade Dinocephalia, a large group of land animals that were generally large and developed before T. rex and friends. Dinocephalians were not all carnivorous, but Pampaphoneus is believed to have been. Fossils of other dinocephalians have previously been found in Russia and South Africa, but Pampaphoneus biccai is the only species found in Brazil.

“The animal had large, sharp canine teeth adapted for capturing prey,” said Felipe Pinheiro, a paleontologist from UNIPAMPA in Brazil.

“Its teeth and skull architecture suggest that its bite was strong enough to chew through bone, like modern-day hyenas,” he continued.

Launch Science Alert, Pampaphoneus lived at the end of the Permian period, just before the mass extinction event that wiped out 86% of all animal species on Earth. Pampaphoneus was 3 meters tall and had an estimated maximum weight of 400 kilograms. It wasn’t just their size that made Pampaphoneus stand out, their skulls were also thick.

“Pampaphoneus played the same ecological role as modern big cats,” Pinheiro said.

“It was the largest land predator that we know of from the Permian period in South America,” he said.

The new information revealed by this skull analysis leads researchers to believe that the currently unidentified jawbone is from a larger, more ferocious version of Pampaphoneus biccai. However, the research team said more fossils were needed to confirm this hypothesis.

This research has been published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

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(ask/afr)

2023-09-19 00:15:41
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