Before Dinosaurs, These Giant Predators Dominated Earth. Now 2,000 Volunteers Are Digging Them Up
Before Dinosaurs, These Giant Predators Dominated Earth. Now 2,000 Volunteers Are Digging Them Up Published By, Last Updated: July 23, 2026, 18:00 IST The fossil
Before Dinosaurs, These Giant Predators Dominated Earth. Now 2,000 Volunteers Are Digging Them Up Published By, Last Updated: July 23, 2026, 18:00 IST The fossil in question is a nearly complete skeleton of a Mastodonsaurus, one of the largest amphibians known to have existed. Rapid Read Volunteers clean the skeleton of a mastodonsaurus, a huge amphibian that walked the Earth 240 million years ago, at the Copernicus Science Center in Warsaw, Poland. (Image: AP) Long before Tyrannosaurus rex stalked the land or giant sauropods roamed ancient forests, Earth was ruled by an entirely different class of predators. One of them – a gigantic aquatic hunter that lived around 240 million years ago – is now offering scientists a rare glimpse into a world that existed before dinosaurs came to dominate the planet. The fossil in question is a nearly complete skeleton of a Mastodonsaurus, one of the largest amphibians known to have existed. Weighing about 1,300 kilograms (2,865 pounds) and stretching nearly six metres (20 feet) in length, the specimen was unearthed in southern Poland in 2023. Today, more than 2,000 volunteers are painstakingly helping scientists free its bones from the surrounding rock in an unusual citizen-science project at Warsaw’s Copernicus Science Centre, according to a report in The Associated Press.
A Predator From A Different World Despite often being mistaken for a dinosaur, the Mastodonsaurus belonged to an ancient lineage of giant amphibians known as temnospondyls. It lived during the Middle Triassic period, roughly 240 million years ago—when the first dinosaurs had only just begun to appear and were far from becoming Earth’s dominant animals. Its broad, flat skull, powerful jaws and sharp conical teeth made it an ambush predator that spent most of its life in rivers and lakes, lying in wait for fish and smaller amphibians before striking. Although its crocodile-like appearance may seem familiar, it was only a distant evolutionary relative. Scientists believe the newly discovered specimen is the largest and most complete Mastodonsaurus skeleton ever found, potentially rewriting what researchers know about the species. “The structure of the body is different from what we knew so far. This is information that is completely new to the scientific world," said Tomasz Sulej, palaeontologist at the Institute of Paleobiology of the Polish Academy of Sciences, who co-discovered the fossil, as quoted by AP. Before Dinosaurs Took Over The age of dinosaurs did not begin overnight. Instead, they inherited a planet recovering from the Permian-Triassic mass extinction around 252 million years ago – the deadliest extinction event in Earth’s history, which wiped out the vast majority of marine species and a significant proportion of land animals.
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