About 95 million years ago in what is now Australia, a relative of the current crocodile devoured a small dinosaur with its strong jaw and swallowed it whole, and the crocodile died shortly after devouring the small dinosaur, which was partially digested in its stomach and then petrified.
Scientists have discovered the remains of the ancient crocodile and its last meal, which were well-preserved at a site dating back to the Cretaceous period (about 145.5 million to 65.5 million years ago), in the Great Basin of Australia.
And researchers reported in a new study - published in the journal Gondwana Research on February 10 - that the length of the ancient crocodile was more than 2.5 meters when it died, and it is likely that its size would have increased more than that if it lived.
The little dinosaur was a small ornithopod - a mostly bipedal herbivorous group that includes duck-beaked dinosaurs. These are the first ornithopods found in this part of the continent, and this animal may have been a previously unknown species.
Although the crocodile fossil had missing parts of its tail, hind limbs and much of its pelvis, its skull and many of the bones of the rest of the body were intact.
A cumbersome name for a new species
Scientists have named the crocodile relative Confractosuchus sauroktonos, which has a mouth (much like the dinosaur that the giant crocodile swallowed almost entirely), but that's because it contains so much information about the fossil.
According to the study, the cumbersome name - a new genus and species - is translated from Latin and Greek words that collectively mean "the broken crocodile killer of dinosaurs."
The name "dinosaur killer" came from the contents of the fossil intestine, while the word "broken" refers to the stone matrix surrounding the fossil, which broke during excavations in 2010 and revealed smaller bones inside the crocodile's abdomen, according to a statement from the Australian Age of Dinosaur Museum. Age of Dinosaurs) in Winton, Queensland.
"Dinosaur killer" crocodile skull discovered (Australian Dinosaur Age Museum)
According to the report published on the "Live Science" website, crocodiles coexisted for the first time with dinosaurs in the Triassic period (from 251.9 million to 201.3 million years ago), and previous evidence indicates that they found some tasty dinosaurs, and they ate them.
Tooth marks on fossilized dinosaur bones (and in one case, teeth implanted into the bones) indicate that some crocodiles dined on dinosaurs, either by hunting and hunting them or collecting their remains.
The first definitive guide
According to scientists, this new discovery provides the first conclusive evidence to show that giant Cretaceous crocodiles ate dinosaurs, but paleontologists rarely find preserved gut contents in crocodiles, perhaps because their guts contain highly corrosive acids, like those found in modern crocodiles.
First definitive evidence that giant Cretaceous crocodiles ate dinosaurs (Australian Dinosaur Age Museum)
Because the bones of the tiny dinosaurs were too fragile to be removed from the surrounding rock, the researchers scanned the crocodile's abdomen using X-ray computerized tomography (CT) machines and then created digital 3D models of the tiny bones.
They calculated that ornithopods weighed approximately 1.7 kilograms.
While the contents of the crocodile's stomach show that its last meal was a small dinosaur, it is possible that the predator captured other animals from the Cretaceous period as well.
However, dinosaurs may have been a regular part of his diet, according to the study.
The researchers reported that most of the dinosaur's skeleton was still attached after it swallowed it, but while the dinosaur killer was eating its meal, it bit it so hard that it broke one ornithopod's thigh in half, leaving a tooth embedded in the other femur.
Ancient crocodile remains discovered at a site dating back to the Cretaceous period (Australian Dinosaur Age Museum)
"It is likely that dinosaurs constituted an important resource in the Cretaceous ecological food web," Matt White, Research Associate at the Australian Dinosaur Age Museum, said in a museum press release.
"Given the lack of globally comparable specimens, this prehistoric crocodile and its last meal will continue to provide clues to the relationships and behaviors of animals that inhabited Australia millions of years ago."