Clash of the Triassic titans

It was the second phytosaur that had finally managed to kill its intended victim. According to Dr. Drumheller, the find also suggests something about the relationships between all the carnivores of the Chinle Formation. This kind of "intraguild predation" happens between carnivores of two different trophic levels or niches in the environment. The Chinle ecosystem, according to the study, was filled with larger carnivores and very few big herbivores. To the team, this was somewhat of a perplexing issue.

Normally, the prey animals outnumber the bigger predators ten-to-one. Yet in an environment like Chinle it is possible that intraguild predation was higher due to the huge concentration of carnivorous animals. The carnivores were thus feeding on one another, and getting past the niche partitioning that would normally allow such animals to coexist. This kind of ecosystem may seem out of balance but the Chinle environment lasted for many millions of years during the Late Triassic. It was thus a healthy ecosystem that certainly worked.

According to the researchers it was thought earlier that phytosaurs were simply aquatic hunters, and that they lived in separate niches to their rauisuchian neighbors. They were roughly similar to crocodiles in their general look, with low-slung bodies and short legs. However their gaits were also much more erect than those of crocodilians and they could possibly hunt on land quite easily.

The Chinle find simply confirms this idea. Drumheller suggests that the attacking phytosaurs were roughly 6 or so meters long. Thus they were somewhat smaller than their intended victims, an added surprise. We also do not know what drove the phytosaur to attack a creature somewhat larger than itself.

As for the rauisuchians, these were short-legged animals with a somewhat erect and flat-footed stance. They had strong, boxy skulls and blade-like teeth and possibly resembled a warped version of a carnivorous dinosaur. It is possible that the unnamed rauisuchian bones might come from an animal roughly 8 meters long, at the uppermost end of their family size scale. The animal may have been similar to several well-known South American species like Saurosuchus and Fasolasuchus both in terms of appearance and dimensions.

Read the original research in Naturwissenschaften.

Vasika
Udurawane

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