#  265-million-year-old fossil reveals oldest, largest predator in South America, long before the rise of dinosaurs 

 





September 12, 2023

 

 

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 In a new study published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, an international team of researchers including Stephanie Pierce and Felipe Pinheiro, UNIPAMPA, reveal the astounding discovery of a 265-million-year-old, exquisitely preserved fossil species, *Pampaphoneus biccai*, found in the rural area of São Gabriel, Southern Brazil.

 Paleontologists from UNIPAMPA and Universidade Federal do Rio Grande do Sul (UFRGS) collected the fossil over one month of daily, backbreaking fieldwork. Due to the pandemic, it took an additional three years for the fossil to be cleaned and thoroughly studied. Co-author Professor Stephanie E. Pierce, in the Department of Organismic and Evolutionary Biology and Curator of Vertebrate Paleontology and Mammalogy in the Museum of Comparative Zoology at Harvard, participated in the study of the animal as part of her current work with senior author and head of lab Professor Felipe Pinheiro, UNIPAMPA, on the Permo-Triassic fossil record of Brazil.

 Read more [here](https://www.eurekalert.org/news-releases/1001178).



 

 

 



 

 

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