10 Standout Details Surrounding Purussaurus, The Prehistoric Crocodile With A Bite Twice As Strong As A T-Rex’s

6 /10 Massive Appetite

Much details of how Purussaurus hunted its prey remain largely a mystery until today.

A research team led by Tito Aureliano of the University of Brazil (Federal University of Rio de Janeiro) took the challenge to figure out how the ancient caiman killed and how much it needed to sustain such a large body mass.

The team specifically studied P. brasiliensis, the largest of three known species.

Preliminary findings suggest that Purussaurus required around 40 kg of food daily, or twenty times higher than modern American alligators.

5 /10 Stronger Than Tyrannosaurus

With a bite force of 6.3 metric tons, Purussaurus’ jaws were actually stronger than or at least comparable to Tyrannosaurus rex, whose jaws could deliver roughly 6 metric tons of pressure.

One research team member, Aline M. Ghilardi, explained that both T. rex and P. brasiliensis were apex predator that ruled their habitats pretty much unchallenged during their own respective times in history.

Their jaws’ structure was built to deliver and sustain massive pressure, allowing them to kill a large mammal weighing up to a ton at ease.

4 /10 Fragile Species

The vast majority of Purussaurus fossils discovered thus far were 8 million years old. In other words, they lived during the Late Miocene period.

An adult individual ate practically anything that moved, but their contemporaries preyed on smaller animals and fish.

Tito Aureliano and his team figured out that the ecosystem in which Purussaurus took the top spot in the food chain pyramid was a diverse wetland with few mammalian competitions.

Despite its dominating physical strength, Purussaurus was a fragile species that would go extinct in several million years.

3 /10 Shrinking Water

The vast series of inland seas or any large body of water eventually shrunk in size during Pliocene, the period immediately after Miocene.

The ecosystem transformed all across the Amazon into a network of rivers instead of vast lakes, which favored smaller animals.

The intimidating size of Purussaurus became its shortcoming during the Pliocene because massive body constrained movement and hunting ability.

They were not agile enough to fulfill their daily food intake requirement. Without enough prey to go around, Purussaurus started to disappear and would never return.

2 /10 Gigantism

Modern smaller caimans are known to eat fruits in addition to meat. Based on this behavior, it was not entirely impossible that Purussaurus also engaged in the same behavior typically observed only in herbivores.

Some previous studies support the argument because the plant remains increased in frequency as crocodilians grew larger.

The estimated daily food intake of Purussaurus could be the first data-driven finding on the metabolic rate of an extinct animal, but how gigantism affected the metabolic function of crocodilians is not yet understood.

1 /10 Delicate Ecological Position

For sure, Purussaurus was one of the largest in the Late Miocene, but it didn’t mean the species had all the advantages.

On the contrary, large-bodies crocodilians found themselves in challenging times during the subsequent period due to the reduced availability of prey.

Massive cold-blooded animals required more intense body temperature regulation and delicate balance in population size as well.

Large-scale changes in the environment were an act of natural selection that put the reign of Purussaurus to an end, 5 million years ago.