The discovery of the ancestor of the current crocodile .. 150 million years old and hates water
The Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences announced today the discovery of a 150-million-year-old fossilized skeleton in the mountains of southern Chile, which researchers have identified as the "ancestor" of today's crocodiles.
Researchers from Argentina and Chile found the fossil of a type of crocodile called "Porquesocus malingrandensis" in the Andes near the town of Mayen Grande in the Patagonia region.
It has since been subjected to analysis at the Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences in Buenos Aires.
The museum said the species is the "grandfather" of current crocodiles and could allow scientists to understand how they evolved.
Scientists believe the fossil will help them figure out how these reptiles went from being wild and hating water to becoming aquatic animals.
This discovery, along with other fossils, supports the idea that South America was the cradle of crocodile evolution.
Federico Agnolin, who discovered the fossil, told Reuters that crocodiles were "smaller and did not live in water. Paleontologists have always wanted to know what that transformation was like."
"Porkysocus has a series of unique features that no other type of crocodile has because it was the first to reach the water, the freshwater," he added.
The Argentine Museum of Natural Sciences notes that crocodiles appeared at the beginning of the Jurassic period, around the time the first dinosaurs appeared.
Within a few million years it reached the water, thanks to the presence of warm and shallow seas.
South America is famous for its rich marine crocodile fossils.
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