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It was 16 feet ( 4.8 metre ) long and tip the scales at 900 lbs . ( 408 kilograms ) . With a frank rostrum and herculean bite , it ate turtle and battled monster snakes . Now this out dyrosaur , a type of crocodilian reptile , which roamed an ancient rainforest a few million years after the dinosaur die , has a scientific name .
It ’s calledAnthracosuchus balrogusafter the fervid Balrog that lurked late in the center - Earth mines of Moria in J.R.R. Tolkien ’s novel " The Lord of the Rings . "
An animation from a Smithsonian Channel documentary shows a dyrosaur being constricted by the “monster snake” Titanoboa.
" Much like that giant beast , Anthracosuchus balroguswas [ awakened ] from deep within a mine after 60 million years entrap within the rocks of tropical South America , " written report researcher Jonathan Bloch , associate curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Florida Museum of Natural History , told Live Science in an email . [ Image Gallery : 25 Amazing Ancient Beasts ]
Four specimens of the new species were excavate in a layer of careen in the fogey - rich Cerrejón coal mine of northern Colombia , where scientist previously have found huge turtles with shells as thick as in high spirits - schoolhouse schoolbook and skeletons of the mankind ’s large snake , Titanoboa , a 48 - foot - long ( 14.6 m ) beast that latterly starred in a Smithsonian Channel documentary .
A. balrogusis the third young coinage of ancient crocodilian found at Cerrejón , scientists say . ( Another , Acherontisuchus guajiraensis , was describe in the journal Palaeontology in 2011 . ) The newly named croc belonged to an intrepid family acknowledge as the dyrosaurids .
A specimen of Anthracosuchus balrogus is prepared next to an alligator skull.
These creature arose in Africa , paddled across the Atlantic Ocean to South America about 75 million years ago and unmistakably last themass experimental extinction that wiped out the dinosaursabout 65 million geezerhood ago , scientists say . Some dyrosaurid species , such asA. balrogus , adapted to fresh water ecosystems like the rain forest of Cerrejón , which was much warmer and swampier 60 million year ago than it is today .
" This group provide clues as to how brute hold up extinctions and other catastrophes , " Alex Hastings , a postdoctoral researcher at Martin Luther Universität Halle - Wittenberg and former alum student at the Florida Museum of Natural History , enjoin in a statement . " As we face climate that are warmer today , it is important to infer how animals responded in the past . This kinsfolk of crocodyliforms in Cerrejón adapted and did very well despite unbelievable obstacles , which could speak to the power of living crocodile to conform and sweep over . "
Hastings and colleagues account the new species last month in the diary Historical Biology . Compared with its cousin-german , A. balrogushas an unusually brusque , forthright snout . copulate with the large jaw muscles that are characteristic of dyrosaurids , this feature would giveA. balrogusan incredibly knock-down bite , Hastings explained .
" It quick became clear that the four fogey specimens were unlike any dyrosaur mintage ever find , " Hastings said . " Everyone thinks that crocodile are living fogy that have remained virtually unaltered for the last 250 million years . But what we ’re finding in the fossil record tell a very different tale . "
