A new species of prehistoric crocodile has been identified by scientists in Australia, which they dubbed the “king of the swamp,” reports CNN.
According to a University of Queensland (UQ) press release issued on Monday, the creature, which is officially named Paludirex vincenti, was over 16 feet (five meters) long and towered over waterways in the southeast. from Queensland.
Researcher Jorgo Ristevski, a doctoral candidate at UQ’s School of Biological Sciences, said she lived between 5.33 and 2.58 million years ago.
The giant crocodile was identified by researchers from fossils unearthed in the 1980s near a town called Chinchilla.
It is named after Geoff Vincent, who found a fossilized skull of the prehistoric animal. According to Ristevski, while “Paludirex” means king of the marshes in Latin, “vincenti” honors Vincent.
The “king of the swamp” was an intimidating crocodile. Its fossilized skull is around 65 centimeters, so we estimate that the Paludirex vincenti was at least five meters long, ”in a press release, Mr Ristevski said.
According to him, the Indo-Pacific crocodile, Crocodylus porosus, which is the largest living crocodile, grows to about the same size. “But Paludirex had a larger, heavier skull, so he would have looked like an Indo-Pacific crocodile on steroids,” he said.
Although two species of crocodile, Crocodylus porosus and Crocodylus johnstoni, still live in Australia today, it is not clear exactly why Paludirex vincenti has become extinct.
Steve Salisbury, senior lecturer at the School of Biological Sciences and Ristevski’s supervisor at UQ, said: “It is difficult to say whether Paludirex vincenti has become extinct due to competition with species like Crocodylus porosus” .
“The alternative is that it died out with the drying up of the climate and the contraction of the river systems that it once inhabited – we are currently studying both scenarios,” he added.
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