Supercrocs walked with - and dined on - dinosaurs

A graveyard of ancient crocodiles has revealed that the world was once home to a veritable menagerie of crocs of various sizes, shapes and fearsome forms. They ranged from a dog-like crocodile to a supercroc that was so big it dined on dinosaurs.

Palaeontologists have unearthed five new crocodile species that lived with the dinosaurs about 100 million years ago until they, too, became extinct about 64 million years ago.

Professor Paul Sereno of Chicago University and colleagues discovered the dinosaurs while excavating sites in the Sahara Desert, which was once part of the ancient southern continent of Gondwana and enjoyed a warm, moist climate similar to present-day Florida.

The finds show that these large reptiles once consisted of a far more diverse range of species than can be seen from today's crocodiles and alligators. They included a crocodile with dagger-like teeth that stuck out like the tusks of a boar and another with a snout shaped like a duck's bill.

In 2001, Sereno led an expedition to the same area which uncovered fossilised bones belonging to the largest crocodile ever discovered, an eight-tonne, 15m giant called Sarchosuchus imperator - "flesh crocodile emperor" - which was said to be so large that it not only walked with dinosaurs, it ate them.

Sereno said that many of the fossilised jawbones and skulls were found on the surface of remote, windswept stretches of rock and dunes in the deserts of Niger and Morocco - a far cry from the lush plains and river valleys that had existed there when the dinosaurs ruled the land.

"These species open a window on a croc world completely foreign to what was living on northern continents."

Ancient crocodiles first evolved about 240 million years ago and modern crocodiles first appeared 80 million years ago. Only 23 species of crocs, alligators and caimans survive today, and many of them are endangered.

- THE INDEPENDENT