Ever lost anything really important? Your keys, your wallet, your all-too-important sense of self?
How about the fossils of a crocodile so gargantuan in size that experts have referred to it as being that of a "super-predator"?
Well, hold on to your hats before you lose those too because just such remains - those of a humongous dolphin-shaped crocodile creature - were not only lost but plum forgotten until reports of its being discovered in a Scotland museum earlier today.
And where exactly in that museum was the estranged fossils of the prehistoric beast found? Funnily enough, right where you might have lost those keys of yours: In a drawer.
Tyrannoneustes lythrodectikos (that's Greek for "blood-biting tyrant swimmer," though it might be better suited to the translation of an Anime film) is said to have roamed murky waters in search of its prey some 165 million years ago. The crocodile-like creature is so designated a "super-predator," in actuality, less for its size and more for tractability in evolving the ability to gorge on other creatures its own size or larger.
As reported by LiveScience's Charles Choi, Mark Young - a researcher/vertebrae paleontologist at Scotland's University of Edinburgh and England's University of South Hampton - has explained that Tyrannoneustes lythrodectikos possessed "enlarged teeth... with serrated edges" that, along with "a change in the shape of the lower jaw that allowed it to open wider," permitted our hungry friend to either cut up larger animals into tiny pieces or swallow smaller prey whole.
Though there's no definite numbers on how large the Tyrannoneustes lythrodectikos might have been, remains of its jaw clock in at 26-in. (67 centimeters) in length.
The rediscovered fossils of Tyrannoneustes lythrodectikos were initially unearthed at the turn of the twentieth century by "fossil hunter" Alfred Lees in central England where, at the time of the dolphin-croc's existence, much of the land would have been "covered in a shallow sea encompassing much of what is now Europe." Along with Tyrannoneustes lythrodectikos would have swam such water buddies as fish, squid, and even cousins to the mythological Loch Ness Monster: Plesiosaurs and pliosaurs.
Astonished by his discovery of the fossils in a drawer more than one-hundred years after their having been originally acquired by his museum - Glasgow's Hunterian Museum and Art Gallery - Young told LiveScience that, ""This new species fills an evolutionary gap in the metriorhynchid fossil record."
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