Huge killer newts killed off dinosaurs more than 200-million years ago

#salamanders #dinosaurs Believe it or not, huge killer newts, the size of a small car, used to lurk in lakes and rivers and used to terrorized dinosaurs more than 200 million years ago. This is concluded based on study of fossil remains of the species, Metoposaurus algarvensis. These fossils have been found buried at the site of an ancient lake in southern Portugal which is believed to have been home to several hundred of the creatures.
This has been reported in news.sky.com dated 24 March 2015.

In the opinion of scientists, these ferocious amphibian, which are a distant relative of the salamander, was one of Earth's most feared predators in those days.
Dr Steve Brusatte, from the University of Edinburgh's School of GeoSciences, who led a study of Metoposaurus has commented that this new amphibian appeared to be something out of a bad monster movie. It was as long as a small car and had hundreds of sharp teeth in its big flat head. He has described the head that resembles a toilet seat, when the jaws snap shut.
The researchers have concluded that members of the Portuguese Metoposaurus colony would have died when a lake they inhabited dried up.
Of course, they were wiped out 201 million years ago, much before the dinosaurs became extinct. The death of the giant newts cleared the way for dinosaurs to take over the Earth.

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