China News Service, Beijing, July 24th (Reporter Sun Zifa) Springer Nature's international academic journal "Science Reports" recently published a paleontological research paper saying that an extinct type of African crocodile-Cecchia crocodile It may be closely related to the existing American crocodiles. This discovery suggests that crocodiles may have migrated from Africa to the Americas in the late Miocene (11 to 5 million years ago).

  The paper pointed out that before the ancient African crocodile skull revealed the origin of the American crocodile, the researchers did not know whether the crocodile migrated from Africa to the Americas or vice versa-assuming a transatlantic voyage.

Artistic restoration of the shape of Cecchia crocodile. (Author Dawid A. Iurino) Photo courtesy of Natural Science Research

  Corresponding authors of the paper, Massimo Delfino of the University of Turin, Italy, and Dawid Iurino of the University of Rome, etc., used CT to re-examine a piece that was discovered in As Sahabi, Libya in 1939. The Cecchia crocodile skull at the Geoscience Museum of the University of Rome identified several new skull structures, including a protrusion in the middle of the snout. This structure has never been found in any other African crocodile species, but can be seen in Orino There are four existing American crocodiles: the crocodile, the Morele crocodile, the American crocodile and the Cuban crocodile. This common skull structure shows that there is a close evolutionary relationship between Cecchia and American crocodiles.

  The author of the paper showed through further analysis of the evolutionary relationship between species that the Cecchia alligator may belong to the same lineage as the four crocodile species found in North and South America. The remains of the Cecchia crocodile can be traced back to about 7 million years ago, while the remains of the extinct American crocodile Falcon crocodile can be traced back to about 5 million years ago. Based on these findings, they speculated that the crocodile migrated westward from Australasia to the Americas via Africa. (Finish)