It was indeed Dunkleosteus: the most ferocious creature of the seas.

An interesting study published in The newspaper “New York Times finally revealed the real dimensions of what is supposed chief marine predator period Devonian360 million years ago: Dunkleosteus.

This creature of the subtropical seas was not so big. Russell Engelmannpaleontologist from Case Western Reserve University, compared the proportions of the head dunkleosteus with the size of the skulls of hundreds of living and fossil fish and came to the conclusion that these ancient fish They measured no more than 4.5 meters and in shape they looked more like a stocky tuna than a slender shark.

Since most of Dunkleosteus’s body was probably composed of fragile cartilage, only the thick plates that covered his head and neck have survived as fossils. Although these plates retain serrated jaws predator, they say little about the rest of its body.

However, according to Engelman, head length is a reliable indicator of fish body size: short species tend to have shorter heads, while long ones tend to have longer heads.

The researcher focused on the area between the eye and the back of the head. “The body cannot change the size of this area too much, because that is where brain And gillsEngelman explained. New York Times. “If your gills get too small, you will suffocate.”