Reconstruction of Gaiasia geniae
Gabriel Rio
280 million years ago, the cold swamps of what is now the Namib Desert were home to giant salamander-like predators that sucked prey into their mouths and captured them with their enormous fangs.
The fossil creature was first discovered in Namibia in 2015. Researchers found a total of four incomplete specimens, which they estimate to have measured 2.5 metres in body length and a skull length of 60 centimetres, making it the largest of its kind yet found.
Claudia Marsicano Researchers from the University of Buenos Aires in Argentina have now described the fossils in detail and given them species names. Gaiacia geniae Paleontologist Jennifer Kluck with later strata of the Gaius Formation in Namibia.
nevertheless G. geniae It may have resembled a dangerous, extremely over-scaled salamander, like the giant axolotl, but it wasn't a true amphibian. Rather, the animal belonged to an ancient group of tetrapods that eventually gave rise to amphibians, reptiles, birds, and mammals.
A specimen of Gaiasia geniae found in the wild
Roger M. H. Smith
Marsicano said the animal probably hunted by lying in wait, much like a crocodile, for prey to pass by.Gaiacia “It was an aquatic animal with a very elongated body that probably swam like an eel, but had very short limbs that would have made it very difficult for it to move around on land,” she says.
The discovery reshapes our understanding of the distribution of early tetrapods, most of whose fossils have been found in the Northern Hemisphere, which had a tropical climate centered on the equator 280 million years ago.
But at the time, Marsicano said, what is now Namibia would have been at a much higher latitude, around 55 degrees south. Gaiacia The fossils were discovered during the Ice Age. [at the time] Severe cold climatic conditions prevailed.”
Despite the cold, Gaiacia This suggests the area was relatively populated, with “a rich vertebrate community thriving,” Marsicano says.
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Source: www.newscientist.com
