Not elder law: A really old crocodile!
Scientists have nicknamed it Godzilla, but it belongs in a new movie: “Jaws Meets Jurassic Park.”
The creature, whose discovery was announced Thursday on the Web site of the journal Science, is a large sea-dwelling crocodile that lived 135 million years ago, in the middle of the dinosaur era. Unlike most crocodiles today, this one had a short, stout snout, like that of Tyrannosaurus rex, and its 18-inch-long jaws held 13 large teeth with serrated edges — the type that tear chunks of flesh out of other large creatures.
“I’m sure it wasn’t nice,” said Diego Pol, a researcher at the Mathematical Biosciences Institute at Ohio State University who is a member of the research team. “A top predator role in the food chain.”
Perhaps 12 or more feet long, it wasn’t the largest crocodile, nor was it the only one that swam the seas. But it is sharply distinct from other crocs, which have a long, slender snout and a mouthful of 30 or more small, sharp teeth useful for catching fish.
“It’s like a crocodile with a dinosaur head on it,” said James M. Clark, a professor of biology at George Washington University who was not involved in the research. “In the realm of fossil marine crocodiles, it’s a big deal.”
Mark A. Norell, curator of paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History in New York, said that this crocodile could have filled an ecological niche similar to that of modern killer whales.