Paleontologists Discover Ancient Amphibians the Size of Cars in Portugal

The amphibians we see today in nature are much smaller than their ancestors. Scientists have discovered fossils of a prehistoric amphibian that lived more than 200 million years ago, according to a new report.

Researchers from the University of Edinburgh excavated the bones in southern Portugal, where they have already found remains from at least 10 individual bodies.

The unknown species was said to grow as long as a small car (approximately two meters - six feet in length), and was considered to be among the top predators for more than 200 million years ago, according to the BBC. Scientists believed that these creatures lived near lakes and rivers.

"This new amphibian looks like something out of a bad monster movie. It was as long as a small car and had hundreds of sharp teeth in its big flat head, which kind of looks like a toilet seat when the jaws snap shut. It was the type of fierce predator that the very first dinosaurs had to put up with if they strayed too close to the water, long before the glory days of T. rex and Brachiosaurus," said Dr Steve Brusatte, of the University of Edinburgh's School of GeoSciences, who led the study, in a statement.

Most members of the group of giant salamander-like amphibians were wiped out during a mass extinction 201 million years ago, long before the death of the dinosaurs, the team said.

"Most modern amphibians are pretty tiny and harmless. But back in the Triassic these giant predators would have made lakes and rivers pretty scary places to be," said Dr Richard Butler, of the School of Geography, Earth and Environmental Sciences at the University of Birmingham.