A newly discovered ancestor of the crocodile known as the Carolina butcher has been unveiled by boffins from North Carolina State University (NCSU).

The giant land-dwelling crocodylomorph inhabited modern-day North Carolina during the late Triassic period.

Dinosaur diggers from NSCU and the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences discovered several bone fragments belonging to a newly discovered giant upright crocodile during a dig in the Pekin Formation in Chatham County, North Carolina.

The bone fragments were from the skull, spine and upper forearm of Carnufex carolinensis, or the Carolina butcher.

The fragments were actually discovered a decade ago, but it wasn’t until experts got around to analysing them that that realized what they had found.

A roughly nine-foot tall ancestor of the crocodile that paleontologists believe was among the period’s top predators until the arrival of the dinosaurs.

The butcher would roam the warm, wet equatorial region around 230 million years ago using its powerful jaws to crunch through small mammals and armored reptiles.

The discovery has changed the thinking on what early crocodiles looked like and did.

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