Look: Chunky, prehistoric "hippo" lived before the dinosaurs

Science Meet Lalieudorhynchus, a distant relative of today’s mammals. by Jennifer Walter Aug. 5, 2022 Frederik Spindler

Sergey Krasovskiy/Stocktrek Images/Stocktrek Images/Getty Images Before the dinosaurs, Earth was home to strange, reptile-looking creatures called synapsids that roamed the land on four legs.

Though some look reminiscent of crocodiles and turtles, they’re actually the early ancestors of today’s mammals. And a newly discovered synapsid species unearthed in France may have lived like a mammal we see today. Romano, Marco, Ronchi, Ausonio, Maganuco, Simone, and Nicosia, Umberto. 2017 via Wikimedia Commons

Frederik Spindler Writing last month in the journal Palæovertebrata, researchers from Germany and France describe a chubby animal with a small head that fed on plants.

Today caseids are extinct, but they were some of the largest animals to dwell on land during the Permian period, between 298 and 250 million years ago.

Frederik Spindler Called Lalieudorhynchus gandi, the animal is part of a family of creatures called caseids.

After excavating an assortment of bones, researchers pieced together what Lalieudorhynchus looked like and how it lived.

Shutterstock Lalieudorhynchus was about 3.6 meters (11.8 feet) long in total — a little longer than the average male American alligator.

Spongy bones indicate that Lalieudorhynchus spent significant time in the water. Frederik Spindler

Frederik Spindler But its remains were found alongside fossilized terrestrial plants, suggesting it probably foraged on land as well.

Shutterstock Lalieudorhynchus probably lived a semiaquatic lifestyle — much like hippos today.

Hippos are mammals, the distant relatives of synapsids like the caseids. The shared traits between them and Lalieudorhynchus show that the ability to live on both land and water goes back hundreds of millions of years. Shutterstock

But the discovery of Lalieudorhynchus brings fresh evidence to support that idea, the researchers write.

Shutterstock The idea that caseids were semiaquatic is a somewhat new hypothesis.

Frederik Spindler “Our observations question the traditional hypothesis of fully terrestrial caseids and thereby support an ongoing debate.” Werneburg et. al., study authors

Look: Chunky, prehistoric "hippo" lived before the dinosaurs

Today caseids are extinct, but they were some of the largest animals to dwell on land during the Permian period, between 298 and 250 million years ago.

After excavating an assortment of bones, researchers pieced together what Lalieudorhynchus looked like and how it lived.

But the discovery of Lalieudorhynchus brings fresh evidence to support that idea, the researchers write.

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