🔻Long before T. rex, the land was ruled by supermeat-eaters that were stranger and more terrifying than anything Hollywood has ever shown

🔻Long before T. rex, the land was ruled by supermeat-eaters that were stranger and more terrifying than anything Hollywood has ever shown.

Two animals circled each other and assessed each other’s powerful, hairless bodies. With scissor-like teeth like meat-cutting knives, piercing claws, and hide thick as a rhinoceros, they opened their jaws to nearly 90 degrees and went into battle. From the right side, one of the animals’ teeth were driven down from above. In the blink of an eye, it was over. The attacker, by plunging its long, dagger-like fangs into its opponent’s square muzzle, won as if hot needles had passed through wax. This happened—or something very much like it.

About a quarter of a billion years later, on a sunny day in March 2021, Julien Benoit received a box to take a look at. He worked in a pleasant, cool office at the Iziko South African Museum of Natural History in Cape Town, where he had been invited to visit the university’s fossil collections. 📸Emmanuel Lafont/ GettyImages