According to local Brazilian mythology, the fierce Teyú Yaguá is one of the seven legendary monsters.
The seven monsters were deformed because of a curse placed on their father, and the first son Teyú Yaguá ended up as a huge lizard with a dog’s head.
Now researchers have found fossils in Brazil of a newly-discovered animal that might have resembled this giant dog-lizard.
An international team of scientists, from Brazil and the UK, discovered a new fossil reptile that lived 250 million years ago in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, southern Brazil, artists impression pictured.
The unusual fossil is now helping scientists understand how modern day birds and crocodiles first evolved.
An international team of scientists, from Brazil and the UK, discovered a new fossil reptile that lived 250 million years ago in the state of Rio Grande do Sul, southern Brazil.
TEYUJAGUA PARADOXA
Teyujagua is very different from other fossils found from the same time.
Its anatomy is a stage in between between the more primitive reptiles and a diverse and important group called archosauriforms.
Archosauriforms include all the extinct dinosaurs and pterosaurs, along with modern day birds and crocodiles.
It lived at a time just after 90 per cent of living species on earth had been wiped out in thhe Permo-Triassic mass extinction 252 million years ago – thought to have been triggered by a giant and intense volcanic eruption in what is now eastern Russia.
The skull of the animal was discovered by the team at the start of this year, and they have named it Teyujagua paradoxa, after the legendary monster, in an area of exposed Triassic rock near the city of São Francisco de Assis.
It lived at a time just after 90 per cent of living species on Earth had been wiped out.
The Permo-Triassic mass extinction 252 million years ago is thought to have been triggered by a giant and intense volcanic eruption in what is now eastern Russia.
‘Teyujagua is a really important discovery because it helps us understand the origins of a group of vertebrates called archosauriforms,’ said Dr Richard Butler, from the University of Birmingham.
Teyujagua is very different from other fossils found from the same time.
The skull of the animal was discovered by the team at the start of this year, and they have named it Teyujagua paradoxa, after the legendary monster, in a Triassic rock exposure near the city of São Francisco de Assis, pictured
Its anatomy is a stage in between between the more primitive reptiles and a diverse and important group called archosauriforms.
Archosauriforms include all the extinct dinosaurs and pterosaurs, along with modern day birds and crocodiles.
The archosauriform group is incredibly diverse, Dr Butler says, and it includes everything from hummingbirds and crocodiles to giant dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex and Brachiosaurus.
This 250 million year old fossil helps the researchers piece together how the skulls of these animals first formed
Archosauriformes include all the extinct dinosaurs and pterosaurs, along with modern day birds and crocodiles. The archosauriform group is incredibly diverse, Dr Butler says, and it includes everything from hummingbirds, left, and crocodiles to giant dinosaurs like Tyrannosaurus rex,right, and Brachiosaurus
‘Teyujagua fills an evolutionary gap between archosauriforms and more primitive reptiles and helps us understand how the archosauriform skull first evolved.’
‘The discovery of Teyujagua was really exciting,’ said Dr Felipe Pinheiro, from Universidade Federal do Pampa, another researcher on the project.
‘Ever since we saw that beautiful skull for the first time in the field, still mostly covered by rock, we knew we had something extraordinary in our hands.
‘Back in the lab, after slowly exposing the bones, the fossil exceeded our expectations. It had a combination of features never seen before, indicating the unique position of Teyujagua in the evolutionary tree of an important group of vertebrates.’
This discovery, published today in the journal Scientific Reports, helps to clarify the initial evolution of the group that gave rise to dinosaurs, pterosaurs (flying reptiles), crocodiles and birds.
Unlike its giant mythological namesake, Teyujagua was a small, quadrupedal animal, and grew up to about 1.5 metres in length, and it did not have a dog’s head.
Its teeth were recurved with fine serrations and sharply pointed, meaning it probably ate meat.
Its nostrils were placed on the upper part of the snout, like modern day crocodiles. Teyujagua lived in lakes and rivers, hunting amphibians and small bodied reptiles similar to lizards.
Excavations in the site where Teyujagua was found are still ongoing.
The researchers hope the discoveries will provide new insights into how ecosystems worked just before the appearance of the first dinosaurs, as well as the environment just after the mass extinction 252 million years ago.