Researchers found skulls that that were believed to belong to a previously unknown dinosaur from 205 million years ago.
The team dubbed the dinosaur Machaeroprosopus lottorum, a Museum of Texas Tech University news release reported.
"We found them in an area we'd been excavating in," Bill Mueller, assistant curator of Paleontology at the Museum of Texas Tech University said in the news release. "I think we've gotten four skulls out of that area already. Doug Cunningham found this specimen, and then we dug it up. When he found it, just the very back end of the skull was sticking out of the ground. The rest was buried. We excavated it and brought it into the museum to finish preparation."
Cunningham found a Machaeroprosopus lottorum skull for the first time in June 2001.
"It was really well preserved with the teeth and everything," Cunningham said in the news release. "Finding one with teeth is pretty rare. It was so odd, but when they come out of the ground, you have a long way to go to actually see what you have because they're still covered in matrix. We were all kind of in awe of it. It had this long, skinny snout. It was quite a bit different. It took me years to get it prepped and ready. At the time, I was working full-time and I did that on my days off."
The team compared the snout and skull bones with other phytosaurs'. The site is in a Texas region that is extremely dry and dusty, but back when the dinosaur roamed the Earth it was swampy and wet.
A female Machaeroprosopus lottorum is believed to have measured between 16 and 17 feet in length while the male was between 17 and 18.
"A phytosaur resembles a crocodile," Mueller said. "They had basically the same lifestyle as the modern crocodile by living in and around the water, eating fish, and whatever animals came to the margins of the rivers and lakes. But one of the big differences is the external nares, the nose, is back up next to its eyes instead of at the end of its snout."
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