A SPECIES of crocodile hitherto unheard-of and living on earth over 75 million years ago has been discovered in a prehistoric dig in the province of Cuenca.
Archaeologists working on the Lo Hueco site in the centre-eastern province, which dates back to the High Cretaceous Period, found the fossilised skull of a crocodile with two-inch-long teeth, disproportionately large when compared with the size of the head.
It has been named the Lohuecosuchus Megadontos – 'Lo Hueco' after the name of the site, suchus meaning 'crocodile', dontos for teeth and mega for large.
The species found is said to bear very close relation to one discovered in Romania at the start of the 20th century, denominated the Allodaposuchus, but the shape of the nose is different with an additional, horizontal nasal passage seen in the Lo Hueco version.
Palaeontologists Francisco Ortega and Iván Narváez of the Evolutive Biology unit at Spain's distance-learning university, the UNED, worked with other specialists in the pre-historic eras from the University of Iowa in the USA, and their findings have been published in the highly-respected science periodical PLOS One.
Ortega describes Lo Hueco as 'a window on a landscape from 72 million years ago', which he says would have been a coastal marshland littered with sauropods roaming around in a very warm, humid climate.
In practice, though, the Lohuecosuchus Megadontos would have been on the planet around 75 million years ago, in the High Cretaceous Period – a time typically thought to be the dinosaur age swansong, although later species have been found.
Crocodiles are among the oldest species on earth and are the closest creatures to dinosaurs around today.
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