Imagine being stalked by a nine-foot tall crocodile sporting an enormous jaw filled with bladelike teeth. Scared yet? Well it also walks on two legs.

Scientists discovered the remains of this 230 million year old beast while digging in the Pekin Formation in Chatham County, North Carolina, CBS News reports. They named it Carnufex carolinensis, or, the “Carolina Butcher.” One of the oldest ancestors of the modern day crocodile, the “butcher” receives its name from its long skull, which resembles a knife, and its bladelike teeth, which scientists believe it used to slice flesh off the bones of prey.

“‘Butcher’ seemed a very appropriate way to get that into the minds of people,” said lead study author Lindsay Zanno, of NC State University and the NC Museum of Natural Sciences, according to CBS.

Carnufex carolinensis ruled at the top of the food chain during the late Triassic period, when what is now North Carolina was still a part of the giant super-continent, Pangea. According to the researchers, dinosaurs had not yet made their way onto the global scene, so predators like the butcher could grow to their giant size.

“People don’t think about how many different predators were around in the Triassic, and that crocs really ruled before dinosaurs,” said Zanno.

In the the end though, Carnufex carolinensis could not survive the mass extinctions that marked that end of the Triassic, and that killed off so many of the large predators of that epoch. But these extinctions paved the way for the rise of predatory dinosaurs, who reigned for the next 135 million years.