According to a study carried out by the University of the Witwatersrand (South Africa), an ancient predator the size of a hippopotamus that lived 265 million years ago was so fast that it could have been a real killing machine. And while Anteosaurus was previously considered a slow reptile by scientists due to its heavy head and bones, new analyzes of the animal’s skull show just the opposite.
With this deadly combination of speed and power, coupled with a mouthful of teeth, the Anteosaurus was one of the most fearsome predators on the African continent during the mid-Permian period (251 million years ago). Also, Anteosaurus belonged to a family of reptiles before the dinosaurs, known as dinosaurs, and all died about 30 million years before the first dinosaurs appeared.
On the other hand, dinosaurs were also part of a larger group of animals called therapsids , which includes the ancestors of mammals.
A very heavy animal
Because the Anteosaurus skeleton was so robust, the researchers hypothesized that it was a slow-moving animal. In fact, some scientists suggested that it could have been an amphibian animal, as it was too heavy to support its weight on land. However, current studies conclude the opposite.
The Anteosaurus possessed a thick skull with a prominent crest on the snout. So, to find out exactly what his head looked like, the researchers decided to use X-rays to create high-resolution images. Thus, they were able to reconstruct the skull and its missing internal structures with 3D digital models.
In this way, the scientists discovered that Anteosaurus had a nervous system adapted to catch fast-moving prey. In addition, according to the lead author of the research, Julien Benoit, the speed and agility would have allowed this animal to hunt another group of reptiles with large skulls known as therocephals.
Researchers have not yet been able to discover the behavior of these curious reptiles that inhabited the planet before the dinosaurs. For this reason, they are now focused on comparing the brain and inner ear of this species with many of its close relatives, because they want to discover what the interactions between animals were like in an ecosystem completely different from ours.
