Five ancient crocodile species surface

Paleontologists Paul Sereno and Hans Larsson today unveiled five ancient African crocodyliforms in the November National Geographic and in an extensive scientific paper published in the open access journal ZooKeys.

Named BoarCroc, RatCroc, DogCroc, DuckCroc and PancakeCroc after their physical characteristics, the crocs were discovered in the Sahara by Sereno, a University of Chicago professor and National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence, and Larsson, associate professor at McGill University in Montreal.

One of the crocs has teeth resembling boar tusks and another has a snout like a duck’s bill.

The crocs, which inhabited the southern land mass known as Gondwana some 100 million years ago, will also be featured in an upcoming documentary, “When Crocs Ate Dinosaurs.”

Reference:

Cretaceous Crocodyliforms from the Sahara

Paul C. Sereno, Hans C. E. Larsson

ZooKeys 28 (2009) Special Issue

doi: 10.3897/zookeys.28.325