Scientists have revealed fossils of a giant salamander-like beast with sharp fangs that ruled waters before the first dinosaurs arrived.
The animal, researchers say, is roughly 272-million-year-old.The findings were published Wednesday in the journal Nature. The researchers dubbed the species Gaiasia jennyae, an hommage to Gai-as Formation in Namibia, where the fossil was found, and to Jenny Clack, a paleontologist who studied how vertebrates moved from water to land.
Fossil remnants of four creatures collected about a decade ago were analyzed in the Nature study, including a partial skull and backbone. The creature existed some 40 million years before dinosaurs evolved.While Gaiasia jennyae was an aquatic animal, it could move on land, albeit slowly. The species belonged to a superclass of animals called tetrapods: four-legged vertebrates that clambered onto land with fingers instead of fins and evolved to amphibians, birds and mammals including humans.
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