While T.rex is often referred to as the ‘King of the Dinosaurs’, a new study has revealed that an equally ferocious predator roamed the Earth millions of years earlier.
Scientists from The Field Museum in Chicago have studied the remains of Whatcheeria – a six foot long lake dwelling creature that roamed Iowa 340 million years ago.
Whatcheeria had razor sharp teeth and bone crushing jaws that could snap animals in half, according to the researchers.
‘It probably would have spent a lot of time near the bottoms of rivers and lakes, lunging out and eating whatever it liked,’ said Ben Otoo, co-author of the study. ‘You definitely could call this thing “the T. rex of its time”.’
Scientists from The Field Museum in Chicago have studied the remains of Whatcheeria – a six foot long lake dwelling creature that roamed Iowa 340 million years ago
To date, around 350 Whatcheeria specimens have been discovered, which are all now housed at the Field Museum.
In their new study, the team set out to understand how the creature grew so big so quickly.
‘If you saw Whatcheeria in life, it would probably look like a big crocodile-shaped salamander, with a narrow head and lots of teeth,’ said Mr Otoo.
‘If it really curled up, probably to an uncomfortable extent, it could fit in your bathtub, but neither you nor it would want it to be there.’
Whatcheeria lived underwater and was a ‘stem tetrapod’ – an early four-legged creature that’s part of the same lineage as humans.
‘Whatcheeria is more closely related to living tetrapods like amphibians and reptiles and mammals than it is to anything else, but it falls outside of those modern groups,’ said Ken Angielczyk, co-author of the study.
‘That means that it can help us learn about how tetrapods, including us, evolved.’
The team sifted through the specimens at the Field Museum to study Whatcheeria at different phases of its life and track its growth.
Whatcheeria had razor sharp teeth and bone crushing jaws that could snap animals in half, according to the researchers
To date, around 350 Whatcheeria specimens have been discovered, which are all now housed at the Field Museum. Pictured: co-author Ken Angielczyk with a drawer of Whatcheeria specimens behind the scenes at the Field Museum
‘Examining these fossils is like reading a storybook, and we are trying to read as many chapters as possible by looking at how juveniles grow building up to adulthood,’ said Professor Megan Whitney, lead author of the study.
‘Because of where Whatcheeria sits in the early tetrapod family tree, we wanted to target this animal and look at its storybook at different stages of life.’
The team took thin slices from thigh bones and studied them under a microscope.
‘By examining how thick the growth rings are over the course of an animal’s life, you can figure out if the animal’s growing continuously throughout its lifetime, perhaps with some temporary interruptions, or basically growing to an adult size, then stopping,’ Mr Otoo explained.
The researchers expected to find that Whatcheeria showed slow and steady growth, much like today’s reptiles and amphibians.
However, the thigh bone samples revealed that the creature grew rapidly when it was young, before levelling off over time.
‘If you’re going to be a top predator, a very large animal, it can be a competitive advantage to get big quickly as it makes it easier to hunt other animals, and harder for other predators to hunt you,’ said Stephanie Pierce, co-author of the study.
The researchers expected to find that Whatcheeria showed slow and steady growth, much like today’s reptiles and amphibians. Pictured: co-author Ben Otoo standing by a life-size illustration of a large Whatcheeria specimen at the Field Museum
The thigh bone samples revealed that the creature grew rapidly when it was young, before levelling off over time
‘It can also be a beneficial survival strategy when living in unpredictable environments, such as the lake system Whatcheeria inhabited, which went through seasonal dying periods.’
The researchers hope the findings will shed light on the evolution of early tetrapods.
‘Evolution is about trying out different lifestyles and combinations of features,’ Dr Angielczyk added.
‘And so you get an animal like Whatcheeria that’s an early tetrapod, but it’s also a pretty fast-growing one. It’s a really big one for its time.
‘It has this weird skeleton that’s potentially letting it do some things that some of its contemporaries weren’t.
‘It’s an experiment in how to be a big predator, and it shows how diverse life on Earth was and still is.’
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