Paleontologists find top aquatic predator's tooth embedded in the thigh bone of an ancient top land predator

Sep 29, 2014 11:05 GMT  ·  By
Photo shows several phytosaurs teeth; the blue one is a 3-D printed replica of the tooth found embedded in the thigh bone of a rauisuchid
   Photo shows several phytosaurs teeth; the blue one is a 3-D printed replica of the tooth found embedded in the thigh bone of a rauisuchid

Just one tooth proved more than enough to help researchers gain a better understanding of how predators that roamed the Earth about 210 million years ago interacted with one another.

The tooth, described in the journal Naturwissenschaften, was not too long ago found embedded in the thigh bone of a top land predator dubbed rauisuchid.

Despite the fact that this creature measured about 25 feet (7.6 meters) in length and stood about 4 feet (1.2 meters) tall at the hip, it appears that one other creature it shared its natural habitat with attempted to turn it into its dinner.

Based on the tooth's anatomy, researchers concluded that this other creature was a phytosaur, a marine creature that stood at the top of the food chain as well, Phys Org informs.

Seeing how the tooth showed signs of breaking and was found at a depth of about 2 inches (5 centimeters) in the rauisuchid's thigh bone, specialists concluded that the animal somehow escaped the phytosaur's attack.

Judging by other marks identified on the rauisuchid's fossilized remains, chances are that this creature was attacked by a phytosaur at least twice in its lifetime.

The coolest part about this piece of news is that, until the discovery of this 210-million-year-old bone, specialists were quite convinced that these predators almost never interacted with one another.

Thus, it was assumed that, while one was king and queen of land ecosystems, the other settled for preying on marine creatures swimming in the aquatic ecosystems it inhabited. As it turns out, this was not the case.

“Phytosaurs were thought to be dominant aquatic predators because of their large size and similarity to modern crocodylians, but we were able to provide the first direct evidence they targeted both aquatic and large terrestrial prey,” says researcher Michelle Stocker.

Furthermore, “This research will call for us to go back and look at some of the assumptions we've had in regard to the Late Triassic ecosystems. The distinctions between aquatic and terrestrial distinctions were over-simplified and I think we've made a case that the two spheres were intimately connected.”