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Ancient 'Godzilla' Crocodile Discovered

Posted by Zonk on from the friendly-looking-critter dept.

SenseOfHumor writes "Paleontologists have discovered a huge crocodile which was a predator of large sea creatures. A Jurassic-age crocodile had the massive jaws and jagged teeth needed to hunt large sea prey, paleontologists say. The crocodile, nicknamed Godzilla, was nearly four metres long with a short snout like a T. rex, four fins and a vertical, fishlike tail." Photos and drawings are available at National Geographic, and more science at ScienceDaily.

4 of 175 comments (clear)

  1. 4 meters? Godzilla? by ManyLostPackets · · Score: 4, Informative

    How about this one?, big as a school bus! http://www.supercroc.com/pressarticles/msnbc.htm

  2. Huge Crocodile! Nearly 4 meters long! by Anon.Pedant · · Score: 5, Informative

    Maybe the poster was so breathless from all the hype that they didn't notice that this HUGE Godzilla-like beast is SMALLER than modern crocodiles. Nile Crocodiles can be 5 meters long, while Saltwater Crocs can be over six meters. Revised headline: Paleontologists discover midget crocodile! -- Anonymous Pedant

    1. Re:Huge Crocodile! Nearly 4 meters long! by Artega+VH · · Score: 4, Informative

      Exactly. In fact the largest recorded Saltwater crocodile was almost 9 meters in length.

      The first thing I thought when I read this (and its been in regular news sites for a day and a bit) was "mmm thats pretty small" and its especially small when compared with SuperCroc (although there is an interesting clash of largest recorded sizes for salties between those two wikipedia articles)

      --
      groklaw, wired and slashdot. The holy trinity of work based time wasting.
  3. Re:Let them extract the DNA by Anon.Pedant · · Score: 5, Informative

    You can't be serious; these are 140 million year old fossils! These are rocks, and you can be sure they won't "find a few cells." Even DNA from mammoths that have been frozen for only 10 thousand years are fragmentary.
    (Or maybe I just don't get the joke.)