TIMES OF MALTA
A beautifully preserved two-metre skull of an underwater T-Rex has been extracted from Dorset’s Jurassic Coast cliffs, the BBC has reported.
The sea monster’s skull belongs to a pliosaur, a ferocious marine reptile that is believed to have terrorised the oceans about 150 million years ago.
The skull is one of the most complete specimens of its type ever discovered and is giving new insights into this ancient predator.
“There isn’t a specimen anywhere else to match it,” palaeontologist Steve Etches told BBC News adding it was one of the best fossils he had ever worked on.
BBC notes that the skull is longer than most humans are tall and has 130 teeth.
Those at the front are long and razor-sharp and could kill with a single bite. The back of each tooth is marked with fine ridges that would have helped the beast pierce the flesh and then quickly extract its dagger-like fangs, ready for a rapid second attack.
“The pliosaur was the ultimate killing machine and at 10-12m long, with four powerful flipper-like limbs to propel itself at high speed, it was the apex predator in the ocean.
“The animal would have been so massive that I think it would have been able to prey effectively on anything that was unfortunate enough to be in its space,” Andre Rowe from Bristol University,” told the BBC.
“I have no doubt that this was sort of like an underwater T. Rex,” he said.
