'Great Grandmother of Crocodiles' Unearthed

The toothy animal, which hasn't been officially named yet, lived in what is now West Texas 225 million years ago. That timing is significant, because some of the world's first known dinosaurs emerged at around the same time period down in Argentina. (You can read about these early dinosaurs at Discovery News.)

This large section of what was then called Pangaea may have then been the birthing ground for some of Earth's largest and most famous reptiles. Pangaea was a supercontinent that existed before the component continents separated into their current configuration.

Perhaps because there was so much land to run on, the early crocodile ancestor was built more for land speed than aquatic surprise.

“This is a brand new animal and possibly the great-grandmother of all crocodiles,” Doug Cunningham who worked on the project, was quoted as saying in the TTU press release. He helped to performed a CT scan of the reptile's fossil.

"These early crocodiles look like your typical terrestrial animals," according to Cunningham. "An intact skull is very rare to find. One of the exciting things is we were able to see inside its brain case with the CT scan. We can see the brain evolved very slowly.”

It was this braincase, and also an ankle joint, that linked the early reptile to crocodiles.

“It has lots of sinuses in the braincase like those of modern crocs,” said Sankar Chatterjee, curator of paleontology at the Museum of Texas Tech, who also worked on the project. “These sinuses may be linked to their vocalization. Unlike most reptiles, crocs are very vocal and hear well. We described a similar animal from China that gives us some idea about the way this animal lived.

Read more at Discovery News