Pre-historic giant salamander-like amphibian was an apex predator

About 200 million years ago, near a lake in southern Portugal there lived a species of amphibian that were one of the apex predators of their day. The animals looked a bit like salamanders, but were roughly the size of crocodiles.

Metoposaurus algarvensis, a previously undiscovered species of “crocodile-like” amphibian was described recently in the the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

It was found in a large bed of bones belonging to a variety of creatures who are thought to have died when the lake they inhabited dried up. The species is part of a larger group of ancient amphibians that were widespread at low-latitudes, though this is the first to be found in the Iberian Peninsula.

The animals grew up to six-and-a-half feet long and had, what is described as, toothy heads that looked something like a toilet seat. The ancestors of modern frogs, newts and salamanders lived in much the same way crocodiles do today, staying close to the water and feeding primarily 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. 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 T. rex and Brachiosaurus,” said Dr Steve Brusatte, of the University of Edinburgh’s School of GeoSciences, who led the study, in a statement.

The discovery demonstrates that the animals were more widespread than previously thought. Although the skull and jaw structure of the Portuguese species make it distinct from others in the group, fossil remains of similar species have been found in India, North America, Africa and Europe.

“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,” said Dr Richard Butler, of the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham.

The giant amphibians died out, along with half of the Earth’s species during the Triassic-Jurassic mass extinction. A combination of climate change, volcanic activity and, possibly, an asteroid impact are thought to have been the cause.

This period also marked the end of Pangea, the super-continent which combined all of the current continents. Prior to this period animals were able to spread from one area to another, Europe to North America for example, simply by walking.

The extinction of the giant salamanders paved the way for the age of the dinosaurs.

To date only about 43 square feet of the massive lakebed have been excavated and new discoveries are likely to follow.