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Huge, extinct croc scrapped with titanic snake?

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13 m, 1 tonne, something massive this way come/Nobu Tamura

It could have been Godzilla vs. King Kong …

From “Ancient Crocodile Competed With Titanoboa, World’s Largest Snake, for Food, Paleontologists Discover” (ScienceDaily (Sep. 16, 2011), we learn:

In a new study appearing Sept. 15 in the journal Palaeontology, University of Florida researchers describe a new 20-foot extinct species discovered in the same Colombian coal mine with Titanoboa, the world’s largest snake.

Researchers think that the 14 metre titanoboa and the 7 metre croc both lived in and around fresh water and ate fish. When the snake was not eating younger crocs. We can assume it was not chummy with the older ones.

Challenges theories?

The new species is a dyrosaurid, commonly believed to be primarily ocean-dwelling, coastal reptiles. The new adult specimens challenge previous theories the animals only would have entered freshwater environments as babies before returning to sea.

“The general common wisdom was that ancestrally all crocodyliforms looked like a modern alligator, that all of these strange forms descended from a more generalized ancestor, but these guys are showing that sometimes one kind of specialized animal evolved from a very different specialized animal, not a generalized one,” Brochu said. “It’s really showing us a level of complexity to the history that 10 years ago was not anticipated.”

Yes it was. But you weren’t listening.

UD News: It’ll get worse. It already is. But also more fun.

Comments
I smell a SyFy movie in the making: MegaCroc Vs Titanoboa!Barb
September 18, 2011
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I would just add here that thinkers on creatures sizes should remember the law. There is no right size for any critter. in the fossil record one will find every creature represented by every size. Healthy areas make hugh animals. Unhealthy the opposite. For example big 'Dinosaurs" are simply healthy creatures and long lived. size was not a defining point about them. If one could hope to find a dino today in some obscure area it would be a same example.Robert Byers
September 17, 2011
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