Researchers discover giant 'Godzilla' marine croc fossil

An OSU researcher concluded the giant croc was among the more evolved of its family.
SCRIPPS HOWARD
Measuring 13 feet from nose to tail, with jaws 18 inches long and serrated teeth up to 4 inches long, an ancient crocodile nicknamed "Godzilla" by paleontologists was a true sea monster equipped to hunt like no other of his kind 140 million years ago.
Researchers described the distinct species, formally named Dakosaurus andiniesis, Friday in an online report from the journal Science.
"It was definitely a predator of large sea creatures," said Diego Pol, a postdoctoral researcher at Ohio State University who used computer analysis of the specimens to fit the creature on the crocodile family tree.
"The many other marine crocodiles that lived around the same time had very delicate features -- long, skinny snouts and needlelike teeth for catching small fish and mollusks -- much like the smaller gavials of today," Pol told reporters during a news briefing Thursday.
Conclusion
After running a computer model that compared 257 different anatomical characteristics of crocodiles, Pol concluded that the giant croc was among some of the more evolved of its family, with much in common with today's crocodiles.
"This is the most remarkable change in the size and shape of the teeth and snout in the history of marine crocs," Pol said.
Paleontologists Zulma Gasparini and Luis Spalletti of the National University of La Plata in Argentina led a team that recovered the nearly complete skull of the giant croc, plus several portions of jaws, from rock formations in two different locations in and around Patagonia, near the southern tip of South America, during a 1996 expedition sponsored in part by the National Geographic Society.
During the late Jurassic period when the crocodile was alive, the region was a deep tropical bay of the Pacific Ocean.
Gasparini had actually stumbled across one jaw fragment of the creature, tossed undocumented into a drawer at a small provincial museum several years earlier. The section looked similar (with serrated teeth) to that of another ancient marine croc from the same era, called Dakosaurus maximus, whose fossils had only been found in Europe. She tentatively named the new species for the Andes.