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Exhibit gives glimpse of crocodile's much-larger ancestor
Skeletal cast of the giant prehistoric crocodilian
Steven Adams, Tribune-Review
Curator of vertebrate paleontology Chris Beard and herpetologist Dr. Brady Barr discuss the exhibit
Steven Adams, Tribune-Review
They just don't grow 'em like they used to, though.
Certain species of prehistoric crocodilians — which are part of the "SuperCroc" exhibit opening Saturday at Carnegie Museum of Natural History — could grow longer than 40 feet, roughly the length of a city bus. And they had teeth as thick as railroad spikes.
These monster crocodilians lived in rivers and lakes during the Cretaceous Period — 144 million to 65 million years ago — feeding on large fish and possibly small, terrestrial dinosaurs who stepped too close to the water's edge.
The most complete skeleton yet found of one of the creatures, a Sarcosuchus imperator, was discovered in 1997 by a team led by paleontologist Paul Sereno. To find out which modern-day crocodilians resemble the 110 million-year-old creature, Sereno joined with reptile expert Brady Barr to examine the 23 species of crocodilians around the world.
A National Geographic Channel documentary filmed on the men's study, "SuperCroc" — which will air again on that station Jan. 12 — is the basis for the traveling exhibit.
"If you look at that skeleton, it's almost identical to today's crocodilian," Barr says at the museum, gesturing to the Sarcosuchus skeleton, poised with its menacing jaws open wide, as if it might chomp down on a museum patron at any minute.
The Sarcosuchus was found in Gadoufaoua, an area in Niger's share of the Sahara Desert teeming with prehistoric fossils.
"You couldn't walk 100 yards without filling your pockets with Sarcosuchus teeth or dinosaur bones (there)," Barr says.
Over three years, Sereno and his team pieced the creature together with foot-long bony armor plates, vertebrae and limb bones. The rest of the skeleton was created based on Sereno and Barr's research of modern crocodilians.
Carnegie Museum will add bones from another, bigger crocodilian to the exhibit, the Deinosuchus hatcheri. Discovered in 1903 in Willow Creek, Mont., by famed Carnegie Museums of Pittsburgh paleontologist John Bell Hatcher, Deinosuchus lived in North and South America.
Other explorers in Texas found a more complete skeleton of the Deinosuchus, which could have grown to almost 50 feet long and weighted 12 tons — bigger than its terrestrial counterpart at the time, Tyrannosaurus Rex.
"This raises questions like, 'Can you get any bigger than that?'" says Chris Beard, co-curator of vertebrate paleontology at Carnegie Museum of Natural History.
Why these creatures became extinct is a mystery, Barr says. Crocodilians, he says, are incredibly hardy creatures that can thrive in polluted waterways and eat as little as once a year if necessary. And a species of dwarf crocodile existed at the same time and also became extinct, which plays down the possibility that the giant crocs were just too big to survive.
And, Beard adds, crocodilians, which branched away from dinosaurs on the evolutionary tree 220 million years ago, haven't changed much in millions of years.
Given the right conditions, he says, crocodilians might be able to evolve into giants again.
| SuperCroc |
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