Discovery! 240 million-year-old 'crocodile beast' was one of the largest of its kind

It's a good thing people weren't around 240 million years ago. They would have been snacks for so many dinosaurs - like this massive crocodile-like beast!  Here's a story on this latest finding!

An illustration of the early archosaur Mambawakale ruhuhu, whose name means "ancient crocodile from the Ruhuhu Basin" in Kiswahili. Paleontologists found only its skull, jaw and a few other bones, so the rest of the body — mainly the tail and limbs — are reconstructed based on the anatomy of its close relatives. (Image credit: © Gabriel Ugueto)

240 million-year-old 'crocodile beast' was one of the largest of its kind

SCIENCE LIVE, Feb 9, 2022

About 240 million years ago, a fearsome archosaur with "very powerful jaws and large knife-like teeth" stalked what is now Tanzania, a new study finds.

Measuring more than 16 feet (5 meters) long from snout to tail, this newly described beast — called Mambawakale ruhuhu, which means "ancient crocodile from the Ruhuhu Basin" in Kiswahili — "would have been a very large and pretty terrifying predator," when it was alive during the Triassic period, said study lead researcher Richard Butler, a professor of paleobiology at the University of Birmingham in the United Kingdom.

This apex predator "walked on all fours with a long tail," Butler told Live Science in an email. "It's one of the largest predators that we know of from the Middle Triassic [247 million to 237 million years ago]," or around the same time that the first dinosaurs emerged.

It took paleontologists nearly 60 years to properly describe M. ruhuhu. Its fossils were discovered in 1963, a mere two years after Tanzania gained its independence from Britain. During the expedition, scientists, largely from the U.K., heavily relied on Tanzanians and Zambians to find fossil hotspots, discover the fossils, build roads to the site and transport the fossils from the field, according to the study. However, the Tanzanian and Zambian involvement ended there; the fossils were taken from Ruhuhu Basin in southwest Tanzania to the Natural History Museum in London, where they awaited analysis.

M. ruhuhu is one of the largest known early archosaurs, a group that emerged following the end-Permian extinction about 252 million years ago. The archosaur clade includes living birds and crocodilians, as well as the extinct pterosaurs and nonavian dinosaurs. When M. ruhuhu was alive during the Middle Triassic, archosaurs "really start to diversify for the first time," Butler said. The study was published online Wednesday (Feb. 9) in the journal Royal Society Open Science.

FULL ARTICLE: https://www.livescience.com/archosaur-apex-predator-discovered-tanzania?utm_source=SmartBrief&utm_medium=email&utm_campaign=368B3745-DDE0-4A69-A2E8-62503D85375D&utm_content=B5A834B5-B079-4FAA-82C2-1C045C39A865&utm_term=cb486bd9-5e56-49fc-869b-ea0dd0662c29