Crocodile with the head of a dinosaur!

Crocodile with the head of a dinosaur!

Approximately 135 million years ago, there lived creatures with most physical features of a crocodile but having head like a dinosaur and fish-like fins instead of legs. A research sponsored by National Geographic Society and published in the journal Science has established this interesting fact.

Headed by Zulma Gasparini, a paleontologist at the National University of La Plata in Argentina, the study made use of a fossil skull of the deadly species found completely intact in the Patagonia region in 1996. Officially named Dakosaurus andiniensis, the write-up published in the journal is a result of 9 years of intensive examination of the body which involved, not least of all, preparation of the fossil by removal of the surrounding rock.

Its bizarre make up notwithstanding, this creature had a 13-inch-long skull while its other crucial features like nostrils, eye sockets and the roof of the mouth very much represented a crocodile. Diego Pol, a researcher at the Mathematical Biosciences Institute at Ohio State University and a part of the investigation conducted an exhaustive comparison of the 'part crocodile- part dinosaur' type creature with the other marine crocodiles existing in those times and did find that the newly discovered species were notably different.

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Nicknamed “Godzilla” by the researchers, it had a small and tubby stout similar to a Tyrannosaurus rex and distinct from general crocodile features. The jaws were found to be foot-and-a-half-long enclosing 52 giant teeth with jagged edges; strong enough to rip large pieces of flesh of other big creatures. Also, unlike modern day crocodiles they lived completely in the water. Dr. Pol said it probably preyed on other marine reptiles like ichthyosaurs and plesiosaurs.

More than a dozen feet long, it was by no means the biggest crocodile species and neither was it the only that ruled the sea during those days. However, it is all the more prominent because it is vastly discrete from most other crocodiles, who are normally found with lengthy, slim snouts, over 100 small sharp teeth, which come in very handy for preying on fish.

“A crocodile with a dinosaur's head,” that's how James M. Clark, a professor of biology at George Washington University (not involved in research) described it.

Mark A. Norell, curator of paleontology at the American Museum of Natural History, believes this crocodile might have been ecologically important just like the killer whales of today.

Paleontologists have known about crocodiles living in the oceans from as long back as the 1800's, when their fossils were found in Europe.

Dakosaurus swam in the Pacific Ocean off southwestern South America in what is now Argentina.