SCIENCE LAB SPECIAL : TOOTHY TERROR

A LAND-dwelling crocodile feasted on smaller dinosaurs : A predator prowled the forests of Patagonia a few million years before the age of dinosaurs came to an end.

As large as a Siberian tiger, it padded on four legs, with powerful jaws and teeth the shape of steak knives.

But this hunter was no dinosaur. In a paper in PLOS One, researchers announced the discovery of Kostensuchus, a large, land dwelling crocodile.

The find shows that predatory dinosaurs in South America faced off competition from their crocodilian cousins well into the last days of their reign.

'' They were not only abundant,'' said Fernando Novas, a paleontologist in Argentina and an author of the paper, they were also large enough to fight dinosaurs like megaraptors and dromaeosaurs over prey.

The remains of the ferocious crocodile were found in March 2020 in Santa Cruz, a province in Argentina. The rocks there formed six million years before the end of the Cretaceous period.

The remains belonged to a lineage of terrestrial  crocodiles known as peirosaurids.

Based on comparisons with living conditions, the animal would have been around 11 and 1/2 feet long [ 3.5 meters ] and weighed about 550 pounds [ 250 kilograms ].

While it was smaller than some contemporary crocodiles, its wide, powerful jaws and serrated teeth were comparable to those of a predatory dinosaur or a modern Komodo dragon.

They would have been adept hunters, including of medium-size dinosaurs.

The World Students Society thanks Asher Elbein.