A team of scientists led by Dr Steve Brusatte of the University of Edinburgh, UK, has discovered a new species of metoposaurus that lived in lakes and rivers of what is now Portugal during the Late Triassic period, between 200 and 230 million years ago.
Reconstruction of Metoposaurus algarvensis. Image credit: Marc Boulay / Cossima Productions.
The newly-discovered species, named Metoposaurus algarvensis, belongs to an extinct genus of primitive amphibians known from the Triassic of Germany, Italy, Poland, and Portugal. These primitive salamander-like creatures lived at the same time as the first dinosaurs began their dominance, which lasted for over 150 million years, and formed part of the ancestral stock from which modern amphibians – such as frogs and newts – evolved.
Metoposaurus algarvensis was up to 2 meters (6.5 feet) long. It lived much like crocodiles do today and fed mainly on fish.
“This new amphibian looks like something out of a bad monster movie. It was as long as a small car and had hundreds of sharp teeth in its big flat head, which kind of looks like a toilet seat when the jaws snap shut,” said Dr Brusatte, the first author of a paper appearing in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
“It was the type of fierce predator that the very first dinosaurs had to put up with if they strayed too close to the water, long before the glory days of Tyrannosaurus rex and Brachiosaurus.”
“Most modern amphibians are pretty tiny and harmless. But back in the Triassic these giant predators would have made lakes and rivers pretty scary places to be,” added Dr Richard Butler of the University of Birmingham, UK.
Several specimens of Metoposaurus algarvensis were collected from a Late Triassic bonebed in Algarve, southern Portugal.
They were found in a large bed of bones where up to several hundred of the creatures may have died when the lake they inhabited dried up.
Only a fraction of the site – around 4 sq. meters – has been excavated so far, and Dr Brusatte and his colleagues are continuing work there in the hope of unearthing new fossils.
According to the paleontologists, the genus Metoposaurus is currently represented by three European species: M. diagnosticus, M. krasiejowensis, and the newly-discovered M. algarvensis.
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Stephen L. Brusatte et al. A new species of Metoposaurus from the Late Triassic of Portugal and comments on the systematics and biogeography of metoposaurid temnospondyls. Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, published online March 23, 2015; doi: 10.1080/02724634.2014.912988
