Leopard-sized predator that roamed the Earth BEFORE the dinosaurs is found using Google maps

A fearsome fanged reptile that roamed the Earth about 265 million years ago - before the age of the dinosaurs - has been unearthed in southern Brazil by scientists. The skull of the predator was dug up from a farm in the pampas plains of Rio Grande do Sul in southern Brazil, after scientists spotted a bare patch on Google Maps and flew over to investigate. The dog-sized predator lived about 40 million years before the dinosaurs - and belonged to a family of reptiles that died out, leaving no descendants.

Named Pampaphoneus biccai, it was a dinocephalian - a member of the family of anteosaurs that looked like dinosaurs but died out before the dinosaurs arrived. It would have been cold-blooded, using its powerful jaws to rip chunks off prey while still alive. The pampas are the flatlands of south America, - and ‘phoneus’ is Greek for 'killer'. Although Pampaphoneus biccai was found in modern-day Brazil, it came from a time when all the continents were fused together into one land mass called Pangaea.


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