The new fossil was unearthed in a remote part of Argentinian Patagonia -- and had teeth comparable to a T. rex, says National Geographic Explorer Diego Pol.
Near the dusk of the dinosaurs, some 70 million years ago, an ancient crocodile prowled the floodplains of what is now the southern tip of Patagonia, its sinister smile lined with more than fifty sharp, serrated teeth.
Named Kostensuchus atrox, this extinct species of croc was a hypercarnivore, meaning it feasted almost exclusively on meat. It was also an apex predator that had "teeth that are comparable to a T. rex," conical and knife-like, says Diego Pol, a paleontologist and National Geographic Explorer who helped discover the new species. With its massive jaw muscles built for tearing apart flesh, Pol says, Kostensuchus "can break you in two pieces with a single bite."
He and his colleagues at the Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales Bernardino Rivadavia in Buenos Aires, along with researchers from Brazil and Japan, described the species' exquisitely well-preserved skull and partial skeleton on August 27 in the journal PLOS One.