Even More Crocodiles for the Newspaper Front Page

The local newspaper in Darwin is renowned for having crocodile stories on the front page. Afterall, the local region is a very significant crocodile region with large areas of crocodile habitat and many large crocodiles.

Below is a superb new crocodile story.........will it make the NT News front page? Will Wicking produce a cartoon to match?

These are momentous decisions for the highly acclaimed editors at the newspaper.

However, it is an interesting thought......a world full of crocodiles. How would Swamp the cartoon character in the newspaper handle so many competitors?


New fossils reveal world full of crocodiles

New fossils unearthed in the Sahara desert reveal a once-swampy world divided up among a half-dozen species of unusual and perhaps intelligent crocodiles, researchers have found.

Researchers have given some of the new species snappy names - BoarCroc, RatCroc, DogCroc, DuckCroc and PancakeCroc - but say their findings help build an understanding of how crocodilians were and remain such a successful life form.

They lived during the Cretaceous period 145 million to 65 million years ago, when the continents were closer together and the world was warmer and wetter than it is now. Some walked upright with their legs under the body like a land mammal instead of sprawled out to the sides, bellies touching the ground. "We were surprised to find so many species from the same time in the same place," said paleontologist Hans Larsson of McGill University in Montreal. "Each of the crocs apparently had different diets, different behaviours. It appears they had divided up the ecosystem, each species taking advantage of it in its own way."

Mr Larsson and Paul Sereno from the University of Chicago, funded by National Geographic, studied the jaws, teeth and what few bones they had of the crocodiles. They also did CT scans to see inside the skulls.

Two of the species, DogCroc and DuckCroc, had brains that looked different from those of modern crocodiles.

"They may have had slightly more sophisticated brain function than living crocs because active hunting on land usually requires more brain power than merely waiting for prey to show up," Mr Larsson said.

RatCroc, a new species formally named Araripesuchus rattoides, was found in Morocco and would have used its buck-toothed lower jaw to grub for food.

PancakeCroc, known as Laganosuchus thaumastos, was six metres long with a big, flat head.

DuckCroc represents new fossils found in Niger from a previously known species called Anatosuchus minor. It would have eaten grubs and frogs with its broad snout.

The more ferocious BoarCroc was also six metres long but ran upright and had a jaw built for ramming, with three pairs of knife-like teeth.

"Their amphibious talents in the past may be the key to understanding how they flourished in, and ultimately survived, the dinosaur era," Mr Sereno said.


[sourced from ABC web site ex Reuters]