The United States has discovered a massive crocodile salamander that lived 100 million years before dinosaurs. According to a press release, the six-foot-long Whatcheeria was found in a limestone quarry close to the Iowan town of What Cheer.
In an article titled ‘Ancient Iowan superpredator got huge by front-loading its growth in its youth,’ scientists revealed fresh discoveries about the extinct creature while studying it at the Field Museum in Chicago.
What is Whatcheeria Crocodile Salamander?
Whatcheeria was an early tetrapod that inhabited Iowa during the Early Carboniferous period 340 million years ago. According to scientists, the Whatcheeria was a fully aquatic creature that swam using its limbs. One of the first creatures to have arms and legs in place of fins was this one.
The predator was described as “the T. rex of its time” by Ben Otoo, a co-author of the study and a PhD candidate at the University of Chicago and the Field Museum. It had a salamander-like body and a long, narrow head.
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Scientists discovered this specimen and learned that it grew to a very large size in a different manner than previously believed. Scientists discovered that rather than growing “slow and steady,” as is typical for reptiles and amphibians, it really went through tremendous growth spurts in its early life. Additionally, there is no proof that it ever ceased expanding.
Co-author of the study and MacArthur Curator of Paleomammalogy at the Field Museum, Kenneth D. Angielczyk, told Newsweek: “Its ability to grow quickly and constantly sets it apart from other early tetrapods.
Other early tetrapods that have been studied thus far often have slower development rates and regular growth pauses.
In a broader sense, Whatcheeria was quite huge compared to many of its contemporaries, and it also possessed limbs that were robustly developed with many places for muscular attachment. It appears to be an early attempt by tetrapods to become a huge, intimidating predator “said Angielczyk.
The four-legged superpredator was unrelated to the species, despite looking like a Massive salamander or crocodile. It belonged to the ancestry that eventually gave rise to four-limbed mammals like humans.
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