With a massive, toothy jaw, a newly described marine reptile once spread terror across the ocean. The approximately 170 million year old animal from the age of dinosaurs is one of the oldest known mega-pliosaurs, reports a research team in the journal “Scientific Reports”.
The giant was therefore assigned to a new group, called Lorrainosaurus. The find suggests that the reign of gigantic predatory pliosaurs must have begun earlier than previously assumed.
Pliosaurs were among the most successful marine predators of their time and had a role in the ocean similar to that of orcas today, according to the study. Individual species could be more than ten meters long. The species now described was probably around six meters long, had a jaw about 1.3 meters long with large, cone-shaped teeth and a torpedo-shaped body. The animals moved with four flipper-like limbs.
Marine reptiles with short necks and massive skulls
The Lorrainosaurus fossils were found in 1983 in a roadside ditch near Metz in Lorraine in northeastern France, it said. Only now have they been examined in detail by paleontologists from, among others, the Bielefeld Natural History Museum and the University of Uppsala (Sweden). “Lorrainosaurus was one of the first really large pliosaurs,” explained Sven Sachs from the Natural History Museum. He founded a dynasty of predatory mega-marine reptiles that dominated the oceans for around 80 million years.
Pliosaurs were marine reptiles with short necks and massive skulls. Their evolution into giant apex predators led to a global decline in other predatory marine reptiles over 170 million years ago, according to a statement from Uppsala University on the study. Lorrainosaurus is therefore the oldest known example of giant pliosaurs.
