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A newfound member of a " dynasty " of pliosaur megapredators was at the top of the ocean food chain for 80 million years , a new study reveal .
The newly described sea monster , namedLorrainosaurus , was a Jurassic ( 201 million to 145 million year ago ) giant with a 4.3 - foot - long ( 1.3 beat ) jaw and torpedo - shaped body from the clade of pliosaurs called Thalassophonea , or " ocean liquidator . "
Lorrainosaurushelped rule the oceans 170 million years ago during the age of dinosaurs.
Scientists first unearthed this sea teras ’s fossils in 1983 . But in a new study , published Oct. 16 in the journalScientific Reports , researchers re - analyzed the stiff and found that the predator belong to a antecedently unnamed genus ( group ) of species and represented the Old " megapredatory " pliosaur on record , according to a statement the authors sent to Live Science .
" Pliosaurids were the rulers of the Mesozoic seas , " co - authorDaniel Madzia , a fossilist with the Institute of Paleobiology at the Polish Academy of Sciences , told Live Science . " With our animal , we are at the very commencement of a bewitching evolutionary chronicle that we do n’t really understand yet . "
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A life reconstruction ofLorrainosaurusswimming in Jurassic seas.
The fossil were excavate in the former region of Lorraine ( now part of Grand Est ) in northeasterly France . PaleontologistPascal Godefroitfirst name them in a short 1994studypublished in the journal Bulletin des Académie et Société Lorraines des Sciences . He assigned the mintage to a genus of pliosaurs calledSimolestes , and named itS. keileni .
S. keilenireceived little care after 1994 , but with fogy - research techniques becoming more sophisticated in the years since , the new study ’s writer decide to revisit it . They found that several characteristic sort the fossils from other knownSimolestes , including broader and more " wedge - shaped " splenials — osseous tissue in the lower jaw — according to the written report .
The pliosaur ’s mandibular bone was also at least 1 foot ( 0.36 m ) longer than otherSimolestesspecies . Pliosaurs dined on sharks , sea turtleneck , other plesiosaurs and more , according to the instruction , so the tool would have used these massive jaw to chow down all variety of fair game .
A reconstructed head ofLorrainosaurusabove its lower jaw on public display.
" It rust whatever it wanted to eat , " Madzia tell . " It was one of the largest marine marauder of its meter . "
The team found the specimen required its own offset on the pliosaur evolutionary Sir Herbert Beerbohm Tree and created the genusLorrainosaurus — so it becameLorrainosauruskeileni.L.keileni ’s re - rating get-up-and-go back the emergence of giant predatory pliosaurs by up to around 5 million years , according to Madzia .
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That ’s not especially long in geological timescales , but it means they were on the scene just after the Jurassic food Ernst Boris Chain shifted around 175 million to 171 million years ago , which saw the decline of other apex predators , such as dolphinfish - like ichthyosaurs , and the rise of pliosaurs , which Madzia key as a dynasty .
L.keileniwas likely more than 20 metrical foot ( 6 m ) long , but some giant pliosaurs grew much larger , with one potentialpliosaur from the Late Jurassicrecently estimated to have been 50 foot ( 15 m ) long .
