Breaking

This 'Terror Crocodile' Had Teeth The Size of Bananas, Perfect For Eating Dinosaurs - ScienceAlert
Aug 12, 2020 53 secs
Towards the end of the Cretaceous period, North America was cleaved in two by a giant inland sea.

In a new study, researchers from the University of Iowa revisited the existing fossil evidence, and also looked at newly collected fossil specimens.

The results of their phylogenetic re-evaluation suggest three distinct species of Deinosuchus can be discerned in the fossil record: the suggested type species D.

"Deinosuchus was a giant that must have terrorised dinosaurs that came to the water's edge to drink," says lead researcher and palaeontologist Adam Cossette, now with the New York Institute of Technology.

While the oldest known Deinosuchus specimen to date is approximately 82 million years old, the researchers say a common ancestral population for all the different species is likely, and would have existed in North America before rising seas led to the Western Interior Seaway cutting the continent in half.

"It was a strange animal," says palaeontologist Christopher Brochu.

Based on the fossil evidence, D.

hatcheri spent their dinosaur-hunting days in the west of North America, from Montana down to northern Mexico.

RECENT NEWS

SUBSCRIBE

Get monthly updates and free resources.

CONNECT WITH US

© Copyright 2024 365NEWSX - All RIGHTS RESERVED