A giant extinct species of platypus with powerful teeth has been discovered in Australia.
All that was found of the new species, named Obdurodon tharalkooschild and described by a scientist as a Godzilla-like monster, was a single but highly distinctive tooth.
Professor Mike Archer, from the University of New South Wales, described the animal as about twice the size of its modern relative.
"We'd never seen anything this big so it really knocked our socks off to think that platypus could get this big," he said.
"Platypus Godzilla. You can imagine the humorous scenes where somebody looks at the modern platypus and says 'That's not a platypus' and then picks up this monster and says 'That's a platypus'."
Professor Archer said the extinct version would have been "positively dangerous" and turns on its head the idea of the creature as small, furry and cute.
"We already know that the modern platypus has venom on the spurs of the hind leg that can be incredibly painful, that can stop a grown man in his tracks for hours," the scientist said.
"If you scale that up to perhaps two to three times the amount of venom in an animal much larger than that, you suddenly start thinking about this animal as a predator."
The modern platypus, a timid and nocturnal animal which lives in deep waterside burrows and is found only in eastern Australia, lacks any teeth as an adult.
"Discovery of this new species was a shock to us because prior to this, the fossil record suggested that the evolutionary tree of platypuses was a relatively linear one," Prof Archer explained.
"Now we realise that there were unanticipated side branches on this tree, some of which became gigantic."
Prof Archer said he was confident that the single tooth was sufficient evidence of a new species.
The scientists do not believe the newly discovered extinct species - found in the Riversleigh site in the state of Queensland, a World Heritage area rich in fossil deposits - was an immediate ancestor.
The extinct species is believed to have been a mostly aquatic animal like its modern descendant and would have lived in and around freshwater pools in the forests that covered the Riversleigh area millions of years ago.
The tooth was found by US PhD student Rebecca Pian and the discovery first reported in theJournal of Vertebrate Paleontology .
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