The creatures likely were present in South America 40 million years before dinosaurs did.
, researchers from all over the world found an"exquisitely preserved" 265-million-year-old set of fossils from the creature.
The fossil species was found in São Gabriel, a rural area in southern Brazil. The fossil includes a"complete skull and some bones," according to the news release, including rib and arm bones. It took paleontologists from the Paleontology Laboratory at the Federal University of Pampa and the Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul one month to collect the fossil. Researchers then spent three years cleaning and studying the skull.
Pampaphoneus biccai are part of a clade, or group of creatures with a shared ancestor. There are four main clades from the period where these creatures existed, and they were part of the Dinocephalian clade, which had thick cranial bones and were large land animals that were found in South Africa and Russia. Pampaphoneus biccai are the only known species of dinocephalians in Brazil, researchers said.
"Pampaphoneus played the same ecological role as modern big cats," said senior author Felipe Pinheiro, the laboratory head and a professor at the Federal University of Pampa."It was the largest terrestrial predator we know of from the Permian in South America. The animal had large, sharp canine teeth adapted for capturing prey. Its dentition and cranial architecture suggest that its bite was strong enough to chew bones, much like modern-day hyenas.
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