Palaeontologists say they have found the fossil of a carnivorous predator that lived more than 260 million years ago and is the oldest unearthed in South America.
"This predator lived nearly 40 million years before the dinosaur and is a precursor to mammifers," said Juan Carlos Cisneros, of the Federal University of Piaui.
The fossil, a complete 35-centimetre skull found in 2008 in the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul, was restored and analysed by South African and Turkish experts who validated the discovery and published it inProceedings of the National Academy of Sciences.
"We are talking about the oldest fossil ever found in South America of a species of the last period of the Palaeozoic era - before the separation of the continents, with characteristics of species only known in South Africa and Russia," says Cisneros.
The remains found are those of a species of dinocephalus, a remote relative of mammifers.
The discovery made it possible to reconstruct the body of the predator believed to have been three meters long and to have weighed 300 kilograms.
It had four big hook-shaped canine teeth (two upper and two lowers) to catch its prey as well as other saw-shaped teeth, says Cisneros.
The species may have walked from South Africa to South America but the long distance to Russia, where similar species have also been found, raises questions as to the shape of the single continent which then made up the world to allow the movement these animals, he added.
The dinocephalus became extinct 250 million years ago along with 90 per cent of species on the planet as a result of volcanic explosions.
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