Scientists Find Fossil of 'Nightmarish' Sea Lizard
No creature is scarier than Godzilla, right? You might change your mind when you meet the Khinjaria acuta!
It was a swimming lizard with a "demon's face," and scientists have just found its fossils in Africa. It was a sea predator, was as big as a killer whale, and had teeth like knives, researchers say.
"It's pretty freakish-looking; a cruel and nightmarish-looking animal. Looking at the skull and teeth, I can't help but think of the series Chainsaw Man," wrote Dr. Nick Longrich, who led the team of scientists that discovered it.
Chainsaw Man is a Japanese comic book series about a boy who can change into a "devil" with a chainsaw for a head.
Dr. Longrich, who works at the University of Bath in England, says Khinjaria acuta was a giant marine lizard from the mosasaur family. It wasn't a dinosaur, however — rather, it was a relative of modern-day Komodo dragons and anacondas.
Khinjaria acuta had "dagger-like" teeth and a forked, snakelike tongue. It hunted in the Atlantic Ocean about 66 million years ago, at a time when Tyrannosaurus rex and triceratops dinosaurs lived on the land.
The sea lizard's name comes from khinjar, the Arabic word for "dagger," and acuta, the Latin word for "sharp." The fossils were found in a mine near Casablanca in Morocco, where Arabic is one of the two official languages.
Dr. Longrich wrote that while no mosasaur was pretty to look at, Khinjaria acuta may have been the ugliest in the family: "Its eyes are small and beady, the face is short and massive, the back of the skull is weirdly stretched out."
Scientists think Khinjaria acuta was wiped out at the same time as the dinosaurs, when an asteroid hit the Earth 66 million years ago.
"It existed just before the marine reptiles and the dinosaurs went extinct," Dr. Longrich said.
He later added: "This was an incredibly dangerous time to be a fish, a sea turtle, or even a marine reptile."
