Discovery: A giant prehistoric croc with teeth like T. Rex
Digital Reporter
Tuesday, July 4, 2017, 6:58 PM - If you thought today's crocodiles and alligators were dangerous enough, it's possible you wouldn't have liked Madagascar around 170 million years ago.
Razanandrongobe sakalavae, or Razana for short, was a large crocodile-like creature that would probably have occupied the top spot on the food chain at around that time.
The species was described in 2006, and new findings from the same researchers says the animal's jaw would have looked a lot like that of Tyrannosaurus and other dinosaurs of that kind, collectively known as theropods.
"Its jaws were extremely robust and high, but possibly short, and bore large teeth with serrated edges resembling those of theropod dinosaurs," the researchers write in the open-access journal PeerJ this week. "Many features of this species strongly suggest that it fed also on hard tissue such as bone and tendon."
WATCH BELOW: Chiropractor discovers first ever dino skull in B.C.
The creature would have likely been the largest land-based carnivore in that particular eco-system, as well as the top predator.
Author Cristiano Dal Sasso told the BBC that Razana in its prime would have been around 7 metres from snout to tail, weighing up to one metric tonne. If that sounds terrifyingly huge, try not to think about modern-day salt water crocodiles, which can grow up to six metres in the waters off of Australia.
Madagascar has always straddled two worlds, at various time being connected to what are today's continents of India and Africa millions of years before today's separation. As a result, the island is a world-famous bio-diversity hotspot.
The World Wildlife Fund says around 95 percent of Madagascar’s reptiles, 92 per cent of mammals and 89 per cent of its plants are endemic to the island and found nowhere else on Earth.
