- Feb 5, 2002
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Long before T. rex, the Earth was dominated by super-carnivores stranger and more terrifying than anything dreamed up by Hollywood.
The two animals circled each other, both assessing their rival's robust, hairless body. With sabre-teeth like steak knives, piercing claws and skin as thick as a rhino's, they snapped their jaws open nearly 90 degrees – and launched into battle. From the right-hand side of one animal, the other's teeth crunched down from above. In a split second, it was over.
Sinking its five-inch (12.7cm) canines into its opponent's boxy snout, like hot needles through wax, the attacker claimed victory. This actually happened – or something like it.
Around a quarter of a billion years later, on a sunny day in March 2021, Julien Benoit was handed a rather unpromising container and invited to take a look. He was working in a pleasantly cool office at Iziko Museum of Natural History in Cape Town, South Africa, where he had been invited to visit the university's fossil collections. The vessel was a very old, simple cardboard box.
"It hadn't been opened for at least 30 years," says Benoit, an associate professor of evolutionary studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Inside was a jumble of bones, including countless skulls, many of which had been mislabelled. As he was sorting through and re-classifying them – assigning them to long-extinct species – he noticed a small, shiny surface.
Continued below.
www.bbc.com
The two animals circled each other, both assessing their rival's robust, hairless body. With sabre-teeth like steak knives, piercing claws and skin as thick as a rhino's, they snapped their jaws open nearly 90 degrees – and launched into battle. From the right-hand side of one animal, the other's teeth crunched down from above. In a split second, it was over.
Sinking its five-inch (12.7cm) canines into its opponent's boxy snout, like hot needles through wax, the attacker claimed victory. This actually happened – or something like it.
Around a quarter of a billion years later, on a sunny day in March 2021, Julien Benoit was handed a rather unpromising container and invited to take a look. He was working in a pleasantly cool office at Iziko Museum of Natural History in Cape Town, South Africa, where he had been invited to visit the university's fossil collections. The vessel was a very old, simple cardboard box.
"It hadn't been opened for at least 30 years," says Benoit, an associate professor of evolutionary studies at the University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg. Inside was a jumble of bones, including countless skulls, many of which had been mislabelled. As he was sorting through and re-classifying them – assigning them to long-extinct species – he noticed a small, shiny surface.
Continued below.
The blood-curdling Permian monsters that ruled the Earth before dinosaurs
Long before T. rex, the Earth was dominated by super-carnivores stranger and more terrifying than anything dreamed up by Hollywood.
www.bbc.com
