Scientists have unearthed a giant fish species with deadly fangs in South Africa that lived about 360 million years ago and may have preyed on human ancestors.
Researchers, including those from Rhodes University in South Africa, say the ancient fish, identified from a fossil assemblage from Waterloo Farm in South Africa, may have grown to over 2.5m long.
The study, published on Wednesday in the journal PLOS, pieced together the fossil remains of the ancient bony fish comprising mostly of the skull, lower jaw, gill cover, and shoulder girdle.
Fossils suggest the fish – Hyneria udlezinye – was likely a vicious predator species of a type of ancient bony fish called tristichopterids.
They say the giant predator likely had “exceptionally large fangs” on the lower jaw and may have fed on four-legged creatures called tetrapods – a group of four-legged animals from which the human lineage evolved.
“The mouth contained rows of small teeth, but also pairs of large fangs which could probably reach 5cm [2in] in the largest individuals,” Per Ahlberg, a co-author of the study from Uppsala University in Sweden, told Live Science.
While earlier research has identified another species of the same genus – H lindae – at a site in Pennsylvania in the US, the fossils from the Waterloo Farm are the first to find evidence that a fish from this genus lived in the Gondwana supercontinent during the Late Devonian period about 383 million to 359 million years ago.
With much of Gondwana being “poorly sampled” for Late Devonian vertebrates, researchers say the new findings have important implications for understanding the distribution and habitat preferences of Late Devonian tristichopterids.
“Although Gondwana was the largest landmass during the Devonian, extending from tropical to polar regions, investigation of Late Devonian early vertebrate faunas has largely been restricted to Australia and palaeo-adjacent portions of Antarctica,” scientists wrote.
Peleontologists say the tristichopterids were wiped off the planet in a mass extinction event at the end of the Devonian period about 359 million years ago that led to major changes in the kinds of fish populating the ancient seas and lakes.
