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Researchers have discovered Australiaoldest known Crocodile Eggshells belong to a “bizarre” snake which was hunted Tree About 55 million years ago.
This was the era before modernity salt water and sweet water species Reached the continent.
Researchers have been digging in a clay pit in the pasture’s backyard for decades queensland The city of Murgon is a reminder of the time when the continent was still connected to Antarctica and South America.
Now, they have unearthed the oldest crocodile eggshell ever found in Australia. They belong to a strange “mecosuchin” group. extinct crocodile It dominated inland waters 55 million years ago, according to a new study published in Vertebrate Paleontology Journal,
It is named Vakkaolithus godthelpi First Nations people whose country was after Wakka Wakka fossils were found.
Some of these crocodiles grew up to five meters long. “It’s a bizarre idea. But some of them appear to have been terrestrial hunters in the wild,” said paleontologist Michael Archer of the University of New South Wales, one of the authors of the new study. “Some were also apparently at least partly semi-arboreal ‘drop crocs’. They were probably hunting like leopards – dropping out of trees on anything unexpected for dinner.”
The extinct crocodiles laid eggs on the shores of lakes and adapted their reproductive strategy to fluctuating conditions, the researchers said. Eventually they had to adapt to shrinking waterways and dwindling numbers of their larger prey.
The researchers said further excavations at the site could reveal more about the prehistoric ecosystem before Australia became an independent continent.
“This forest was also home to the world’s oldest known songbirds, Australia’s oldest frogs and snakes, a wide range of small mammals with South American links, as well as one of the world’s oldest known bats,” said Michael Stein, another author of the study.
The study’s lead author, Javier Panades i Blas, said the latest research showed just how powerful studying eggshell fragments can be.
“Eggshells should be a routine, standard component of paleontology research,” he said, “collected, stored, and analyzed along with bones and teeth.”
“They preserve microstructural and geochemical cues that tell us not only what type of animal laid them,” he explained, meaning the egg shells, “but also where they nested and how they reproduced.”