Chuck Bednar for redOrbit.com – @BednarChuck
It may sound like a mass murderer or a ruthless dictator (possibly even a future subject of an HBO documentary series), but in reality, the creature called the “Carolina Butcher” was actually an ancient, land-dwelling crocodilian ancestor that grew to nine-feet in length.
According to Gizmodo, the Carolina Butcher or Carnufex carolinensis lived in the southeastern US during the Late Triassic, more than 230 million years ago. It dined on small, armored reptiles and actually challenged dinosaurs for the title of top predator, and it walked on its hind legs.
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The creature, which the website calls “a badass addition to the family of proto-crocs that once roamed the Earth alongside the dinosaurs,” was discovered by paleontologists from the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences and North Carolina State University (NCSU). It was also the topic of a new study published online Thursday in the journal Nature Scientific Reports.
Earliest appearance of crocodylomorphs
The researchers were able to recover fragments of Carnufex’s skull, spine and upper forelimb from the Pekin Formation in Chatham County, North Carolina. Since the skull was preserved in pieces, the paleontologists scanned the individual bones using a high-resolution surface scanner to create a 3D model, filling in the missing pieces using more complete skulls of close relatives.
This image shows a reconstructed skull of Carnufex carolinensis. 3-D surface models of skull bones are shown in white. Grey areas are missing elements reconstructed from close relatives of Carnufex. (Credit Lindsay Zanno)
The Pelkin Formation contained sediments deposited during the beginning of the Late Triassic at a time when what is now North Carolina was a wet, warm equatorial region that was just starting to break apart from the ancient supercontinent known as Pangea, explained lead author Lindsay Zanno, director of the museum’s paleontology and geology lab.
“Fossils from this time period are extremely important to scientists because they record the earliest appearance of crocodylomorphs and theropod dinosaurs, two groups that first evolved in the Triassic period, yet managed to survive to the present day in the form of crocodiles and birds,” Zanno, who is also an assistant research professor at NCSU, said in a statement.
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“The discovery of Carnufex, one of the world’s earliest and largest crocodylomorphs, adds new information to the push and pull of top terrestrial predators across Pangea.” she added. “Until we deciphered the story behind Carnufex, it wasn’t clear that early crocodile ancestors were among those vying for top predator roles prior to the reign of dinosaurs in North America.”
“Carnufex” sounds like something you’d take for allergies
Among the predators that roamed Pangea around this time were rauisuchids and poposauroids, large and fearsome cousins of ancient crocodiles that died out in the Triassic Period. Zanno said that these creatures would hunt alongside early theropod dinosaurs in the Southern Hemisphere, but that the discovery of Carnufex indicates that large-bodied crocodylomorphs, not dinosaurs, were the creatures competing with other top predators for dominance in the north.
Near the end of the Triassic, extinction claimed the majority of these massive predators, leaving behind only small-bodied crocodylomorphs and theropods. Theropods, Zanno said, “were ready understudies for vacant top predator niches when large-bodied crocs and their relatives bowed out. Predatory dinosaurs went on to fill these roles exclusively for the next 135 million years.”
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Even so, ancient crocodiles were able to find success in other parts of the world, added study co-author and NCSU graduate student says Susan Drymala: “As theropod dinosaurs started to make it big, the ancestors of modern crocs initially took on a role similar to foxes or jackals, with small, sleek bodies and long limbs. If you want to picture these animals, just think of a modern day fox, but with alligator skin instead of fur.”
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