Researchers report they've found a new water monster in west Texas that lived about 205 million years ago.

A science team from Texas Tech University has announced the discovery of a new species of phytosaur from the Triassic age, which stretched from about 230 to 203 million years ago.

The findings are published in the peer-reviewed journal Earth and Environmental Science Transactions of the Royal Society of Edinburgh.

Bill Mueller, assistant curator of Paleontology at the Museum of Texas Tech University, explained he and his colleagues named their find Machaeroprosopus lottorum, after the Lott family who owns the ranch where the remains of the prehistoric creature were uncovered.

"We found them in an area we'd been excavating in," Mueller said. "I think we've gotten four skulls out of that area already."

Mueller said Doug Cunningham, a field research assistant at the museum and retired firefighter, "found this specimen, and then we dug it up. When he found it, just the very back end of the skull was sticking out of the ground. The rest was buried. We excavated it and brought it into the museum to finish preparation."

Cunningham recalled finding the unique female skull on Jun. 27, 2001. After removing it from the mudstone, he remembers looking over the specimen and wondering if his discovery would lead to a new chapter in animal science. Turns out, it did.

"It was really well preserved with the teeth and everything," Cunningham said. "Finding one with teeth is pretty rare. It was so odd, but when they come out of the ground, you have a long way to go to actually see what you have because they're still covered in matrix. We were all kind of in awe of it. It had this long, skinny snout. It was quite a bit different. It took me years to get it prepped and ready. At the time, I was working full-time and I did that on my days off."

While West Texas is dry and dusty now, it's believed the area was more a swampy, tropical rainforest during the Triassic period, as the planet's landmasses at that point were converged together to form the supercontinent of Pangaea.

Mueller speculated that, in the Texas forest undergrowth covered by tall conifers and overrun by with ferns, phytosaurs hid beneath the water and waited for prey.

Somehow in the treacherous waters of an ancient oxbow lake likely created by a flooded river, the female phytosaur that the researchers found died and sank to the bottom about 205 million years ago. Then, only about 40 yards away, the remains of a larger, male phytosaur also ended up at the lake's bottom and soon both the creatures were entombed under soil and sediment.

At this point, though, researchers don't know how and why the animals died, or what took the remains of their bodies but left the skulls behind.

By looking an opening on the skull, the snout and the shape of the bones at the back of the head, the Mueller's team determined they'd discovered a separate species from other known phytosaurs.

"A phytosaur resembles a crocodile," Mueller said. "They had basically the same lifestyle as the modern crocodile by living in and around the water, eating fish, and whatever animals came to the margins of the rivers and lakes. But one of the big differences is the external nares, the nose, is back up next to its eyes instead of at the end of its snout."

Mueller said scientists can distinguish the sexes of the animals by a specific feature on males, a bony crest that runs from the nostrils by the eyes to the tip of its beak.

Mueller guessed the female phytosaur would have measured approximately 16 to 17 feet in length, from her nose to the tip of her tail. The male would have been about 17 to 18 feet long.