The broken tooth of a large predator has been found.
It is not T. rex. It is not a dinosaur. The tooth is from a giant marine reptile that lived about 205 million years ago.
The fossil fang's root is twice as wide as any other tooth of the same type, according to a new study published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
The previous record holder for largest tooth was an irrthyosaur that was nearly 50 feet long, and the study authors said it was possible that the owner of this newly described tooth was one of the largest animals ever to live on land or sea.
It is not possible to tell whether the ancient marine reptile was a true leviathan or simply one of many similarly sized sea monsters that ruled the Triassic seas because scientists only have half a tooth to base their research on.
It is difficult to say if the tooth is from a large or average-sized animal, according to the lead study author.
The Ichthyosaur vertebra is being held by Heinz Furrer. She is a professor at the University of Zurich.
Ichthyosaurs, whose name means "fish lizards", emerged during the middle Triassic period (about 250 million to 200 million years ago), not long after the extinction wiped out 95 percent of life.
The study authors wrote that the aquatic reptiles did very well for themselves in these changing seas, and within about 5 million years of their first appearance, they ballooned to enormous sizes and dominated all the world's oceans.
The largest known animal is a whale-like creature that was up to 69 feet long.
An artist has created a reconstruction of an animal. Marcello Perillo is a professor at the University of Bonn.
The blue whales are generally between 80 and 100 feet long, while the T. rex is between 40 and 12 feet long.
According to the researchers, many large ichthyosaurs, including the gargantuan Shastasaurus, seem to have become top predator without ever evolving teeth. There is only one species of giant ichthyosaur that has a mouth full of teeth.
When scientists discovered a large fossil tooth in the Kössen Formation of the Swiss Alps, they believed it to be from an animal that lived at the bottom of a sea.
The tooth's root is 60mm wide. She is a professor at the University of Zurich.
In the new study, the researchers looked at the fossil tooth in detail, along with the large bones of the irrthyosaur, all discovered in the same Alpine formation between 1976 and 1990. In order to estimate the size and species of the new specimen, the team compared the sample of bones to other giant ichthyosaur fossils with more complete skeletons.
The researchers said that the fossil tooth is twice as wide as any known one.
The pattern of the hard tissue that makes up reptile and mammal teeth is unique and proves that the tooth belonged to an animal.
If the tooth is correct, then researchers could be looking at the largest creature ever discovered.
The ribs and vertebrae from the Kössen Formation are some of the largest fossils of their kind ever found in Europe. The tooth, ribs and vertebrae look like they are from three different irrthyosaurs.
The researchers wrote that the late Triassic giant ichthyosaurs were among the largest animals to ever live on the planet.
It is not possible to categorize the bones as a particular species because only a few remain.
The team said that several of the fossils appear to have been crushed by the movement of tectonic plates that raised the Alps out of the sea over hundreds of millions of years.
The researchers have assigned the three specimen to the same family of giants. The question of whether or not the specimen dwarfs the other goliath sea monsters cannot be answered without more fossil evidence.
There are related stories.
There is a graveyard of fossils in Chile.
New medical scans show that T. rex had a bone problem.
Scientists have found that the dinosaur withmurder feet wasn't so big after all.
The article was published by Live Science. The original article can be found here.
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