Proof of historical tree-climbing ‘drop crocs’ present in Australia

Scientists have unearthed Australia’s oldest recognized crocodile eggshells which can have belonged to “drop crocs” – creatures that climbed bushes to hunt prey beneath.

The discovery of the 55-million-year-old eggshells was made in a sheep farmer’s yard in Queensland with the findings printed within the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

The egghells belonged to a long-extinct group of crocodiles generally known as mekosuchines, who lived in inland waters when Australia was a part of Antarctica and South America.

Co-author Prof Michael Archer stated “drop crocs” had been a “bizarre idea” however some had been “perhaps hunting like leopards – dropping out of trees on any unsuspecting thing they fancied for dinner”.

Prof Archer, a palaeontologist on the University of New South Wales, stated mekosuchine crocodiles – which might develop to about 5 metres – had been plentiful 55 million years in the past, lengthy earlier than their fashionable saltwater and freshwater cousins arrived in Australia about 3.8 million years in the past.

The “drop croc” eggshells had been found a number of many years in the past however solely lately analysed with the assistance of scientists in Spain.

“It’s a bizarre idea,” Prof Archer stated of the “drop crocs”, however some had been most likely “terrestrial hunters in the forests”.

The findings add to earlier discoveries of youthful mekosuchine fossils – present in 25-million-year-old deposits in one other a part of Queensland.

“Some were also apparently at least partly semi-arboreal ‘drop crocs’,” Prof Archer stated.

Since the early Nineteen Eighties, he has been a part of a gaggle of scientists excavating a clay pit in Murgon, a small regional city about 270km (168 miles) north-west of Brisbane.

Over the many years, it has develop into generally known as one in all Australia’s oldest fossil websites because it was once surrounded by a lush forest.

“This forest was also home to the world’s oldest-known songbirds, Australia’s earliest frogs and snakes, a wide range of small mammals with South American links, as well as one of the world’s oldest known bats,” Dr Michael Stein, a co-author of the report, stated.

Prof Archer recollects how in 1983, he and one other colleague “drove to Murgon, parked the car on the side of the road, grabbed our shovels, knocked on the door and asked if we could dig up their backyard”.

“After explaining the prehistoric treasures that might lie under their sheep paddock and that fossil turtle shells had already been found in the area, they grinned and said ‘of course!’.

“And, fairly clearly, from the various fascinating animals that we have already discovered on this deposit since 1983, we all know that with extra digging there will likely be much more surprises to come back.”