Monday 30th July, 2012

July 30, 2012 in Wildlife Village by Susan M

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Good Morning Everyone

Some more interesting news I came across in the Wildllife Extra news last week

Huge fossil crocodile discovered in East Africa

misc/2012/crocodile_hugeThe illustration shows the comparative sizes of ancient/modern crocodiles and ancient/modern humans. Illustration by Chris Brochu.

Large enough to swallow humans

May 2012. A crocodile large enough to swallow humans once lived in East Africa, according to a University of Iowa researcher.

“It’s the largest known true crocodile,” says Christopher Brochu, associate professor of geoscience. “It may have exceeded 27 feet in length. By comparison, the largest recorded Nile crocodile was less than 21 feet, and most are much smaller.”

Similar, but bigger, than Nile crocodile
The new species lived between 2 and 4 million years ago in Kenya. It resembled its living cousin, the Nile crocodile, but was more massive.

He recognized the new species from fossils that he examined three years ago at the National Museum of Kenya in Nairobi. Some were found at sites known for important human fossil discoveries. “It lived alongside our ancestors, and it probably ate them,” Brochu says. He explains that although the fossils contain no evidence of human/reptile encounters, crocodiles generally eat whatever they can swallow, and humans of that time period would have stood no more than four feet tall.

Crocodile expert
Regarding the name he gave to the new species, Brochu said there was never a doubt. The crocodile Crocodylus thorbjarnarsoni is named after John Thorbjarnarson, famed crocodile expert and Brochu’s colleague who died of malaria while in the field several years ago.

“He was a giant in the field, so it only made sense to name a giant after him,” Brochu says. “I certainly miss him, and I needed to honour him in some way. I couldn’t not do it.”

It took four men to lift the fossilized crocodile head. But other experts had seen the fossil without realizing it was a new species. Brochu points out that the Nairobi collection is “beautiful” and contains many fossils that have been incompletely studied. “So many discoveries could yet be made,” he says.

In fact, this isn’t the first time Brochu has made a discovery involving fossils from eastern Africa. In 2010, he published a paper on his finding a man-eating horned crocodile from Tanzania named Crocodylus anthropophagus-a crocodile related to his most recent discovery.

In 2009 the fossils of a giant snake were found in Colombia. This artist's rendering of Titanoboa cerrejonensis demonstrates the great snake's size. It is anticipated the boa spent much of its life in or near water. Jason Bourque, University of Florida.
In 2009 the fossils of a giant snake were found in Colombia. This artist’s rendering of Titanoboa cerrejonensis demonstrates the great snake’s size. It is anticipated the boa spent much of its life in or near water. Jason Bourque, University of Florida.

Brochu says Crocodylus thorbjarnarsoni is not directly related to the present-day Nile crocodile. This suggests that the Nile crocodile is a fairly young species and not an ancient “living fossil,” as many people believe. “We really don’t know where the Nile crocodile came from,” Brochu says, “but it only appears after some of these prehistoric giants died out.”

Brochu’s paper on the discovery of a new crocodile species was just published in the May 3 issue of the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. The work was funded in part by the National Science Foundation and the UI Obermann Center for Advanced Studies.

Emma and I were up at Lowes yesterday, so here is just a couple of pics for you for now. Hope you like them

Blue44

LADY IN THE BOINGY TREE

LADY & BLUE44

 

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The Dyfi Osprey Project and the Scottish wildlife Trust  have kindly given their permission for us to post still and video images from their webcams. To visit their sites please click on the relevant link.    Loch of the Lowes.  Dyfi Osprey Project.


 


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