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About 40 million years before the dinosaurs dominated the planet, one gigantic salamander-like creature haunted the swamps of what is modern-day Namibia.

Meet the Gaiasia jennyae, whose name could translate to “salamander from hell.” This extinct amphibian was more than six feet long and had a suction cup mouth and a skull about two feet in length, according to findings published in the journal Nature.

It also had a peculiar head and mouth that packed four-inch fangs and a ring of smaller sharp teeth.

“It’s got a big, flat, toilet seat-shaped head, which allows it to open its mouth and suck in prey,” explained co-author Jason Pardo in a statement. “It has these huge fangs, the whole front of the mouth is just giant teeth.”

The species lived around 280 million years ago during the Permian Period and its fossilized remains were found in northern Namibia. During that period, Namibia was part of the southern supercontinent Gondwana.

Pardo and his colleagues suggested that G. jennyae was a formidable ambush predator that lurked near the bottom of prehistoric swamps and lakes. Its diet mainly consisted of fish, freshwater sharks and even smaller Gaiasia – indicating it was the apex predator of the era.

The study shows that the ancient creature was a stem tetrapod, an early four-legged vertebrate, linking it to the ancestors of modern reptiles, amphibians, mammals, and birds.

“Tetrapods were the animals that crawled out of the water around 380 million years ago, maybe a little earlier,” Pardo told Ars Technica.

Because its fossils were found in an area that was possibly cold and glaciated during the Permian period, the findings contradict the belief that large, cold-blooded animals could only thrive in warm environments.

Pardo noted that the study challenges previous beliefs that such creatures had gone extinct 10s of millions of years earlier due to climate change or competition with more advanced tetrapods.

Meanwhile, the study opens up new possibilities for understanding the diversity and distribution of life in Gondwana during the late Carboniferous and early Permian periods.