The animal, believed to be the world’s biggest ocean-dwelling crocodile, was found buried on the edge of the Sahara.
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The world’s largest sea-dwelling crocodile was recently unearthed in the Tunisian desert. Included among the fossils was a skull that was five-feet long, and a handful of other bones, the Washington Post reported.
Other experts have also wondered why marine crocodiles were not able to reclaim their glory and thrive.
Beyond its size, Fanti said the significance of the find is what it tells us about a mass extinction event that is believed to have happened between the Jurassic and Cretaceous period about 150 million years ago.
The researchers suggest that this site in central Tunisia was a lagoon that faced the ocean some 125 million years ago or so.
Where the fossils were found is also a very special occurrence – as the fossils of Tunisia have not been well explored.
The fossils indicate that Machimosaurus rex belonged to a group of crocodiles that inhabited the sea and coastal areas around the end of the Jurassic Period, but the species is not directly related to modern-day crocodiles, Fanti said.
Its “stocky, relatively short and rounded teeth” combined with the bite force would mean it was likely a general hunter which ate a wide variety of prey including marine turtles.
“It would likely have been something of an ambush predator, hanging around in shallow water hunting turtles and fishes and maybe waiting for some land animals to come a little too close to the shore”.
For this reason, the transition from the Jurassic period to the Cretaceous has been considered for a long time as a period of extinction at the global level.
It’s believed the creature was nearly ten metres long, weighing three tons, making it the biggest ever crocodile to live in the ocean.
While Machimosaurus Rex is not the biggest ancient crocodile charted, its discovery has led to debunk some of the preconceived notions about the genus.
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Researchers estimates that the crocodile used to swim in the oceans around 130 million years ago, late in the era of dinosaurs.
