An enormous armored crocodile cousin with plates embedded in its pores and skin and curved spikes alongside its flanks roamed our planet 215 million years in the past, scientists reveal.The newfound species, found within the Cooper Canyon Formation in northwestern Texas, was an aetosaur. These stout-limbed beasts grew as much as 16 ft (5 meters) lengthy and had been lined in bony plates known as osteoderms for cover. They had been “tanks of the Triassic,” based on a press release launched by The College of Texas at Austin.Researchers unearthed a big portion of the creature’s dorsal carapace, or again armor, the researchers stated in a examine, printed Jan. 11 within the journal The Anatomical File.”Now we have parts from the again of the neck and shoulder area all the best way to the tip of the tail,” lead writer William Reyes, a doctoral scholar at The College of Texas at Austin, stated within the assertion. “Often, you discover very restricted materials.”An illustration of the newly found aetosaur, Garzapelta muelleri. (Picture credit score: Márcio L. Castro)Aetosaurs dominated Earth in the course of the late Triassic (237 million to 201 million years in the past), residing on each continent besides Australia and Antarctica, based on the assertion. In contrast to trendy crocodiles, that are strictly carnivores, aetosaurs had been primarily omnivores.Associated: Beautiful 240 million-year-old ‘Chinese language dragon’ fossil unveiled by scientistsThe late paleontologist Invoice Mueller found the newly described fossil with native beginner collector Emmett Shedd in 1989. Preliminary analysis within the early 2000s discovered that the animal was doubtless a brand new species of aetosaur, however did not decipher its evolutionary historical past.Get the world’s most fascinating discoveries delivered straight to your inbox.Reyes and his colleagues named the animal Garzapelta muelleri. The genus identify combines “Garza” from Garza County, the place it was discovered, with “pelta,” that means “protect” in Latin. The species identify honors Mueller.William Reyes examines the fossilized stays of Garzapelta muelleri. (Picture credit score: William Reyes)The fossil stands out amongst identified aetosaurs because of a wide range of distinctive options, together with a never-before-seen mixture of bony plates. Nonetheless, the staff had hassle determining the place it sat on the aetosaur household tree.Most aetosaurs match into certainly one of two main teams: Aetosaurinae and Stagonolepidoidea. Nonetheless, G muelleri had osteoderms on its again that resembled a species of Aetosaurinae known as Rioarribasuchus chamaensis and lateral osteoderms — midsection spikes — that resembled a genus of species in Stagonolepidoidea known as Desmatosuchus, based on the examine.The staff cautiously concluded that G muelleri had extra in frequent with Aetosaurinae total and that its spikes doubtless developed independently in a course of known as convergent evolution, the place two unrelated or distantly associated species evolve related traits independently.”Convergence of the osteoderms throughout distantly associated aetosaurs has been famous earlier than, however the carapace of Garzapelta muelleri is the perfect instance of it and exhibits to what extent it will probably occur and the issues it causes in our phylogenetic analyses,” Reyes stated.