A new species of crocodile dating back to the Cretaceous period has been discovered in Queensland, and its last meal was a young dinosaur, scientists say.
The fossilised bones of a confractosuchus sauroktonos were excavated in 2010 from a sheep station near the Winton Formation, a geological rock bed that is about 95 million years old.
Inside the stomach of the 2.5m-long crocodile, scientists identified the partly digested remnants of a young ornithopod, according to a paper naming the new species published in the scientific journal Gondwana Research on February 11.
This is the first evidence of a crocodile preying on a dinosaur in Australia, the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum, which made the discovery, said in a statement.
The crocodile sample, which was initially preserved in a siltstone mass, had been partially crushed. However, the damage revealed a number of small bones from the skeleton of a small Cretaceous creature.
Scientists used X-ray and CT scanning technologies to locate the bones inside the crocodile specimen, as well as 10 months of computer processing to produce a 3D reconstruction of the bones.
With 35 per cent of the freshwater crocodile preserved, researchers were able to recover its near-complete skull. While they were unable to classify the young dinosaur inside its stomach, they described it as a juvenile weighing nearly 1.7kg.
The crocodile had killed the animal, or foraged it soon after its death, the press statement said.
Such a discovery is “extremely rare, as only a handful of examples of dinosaur predation are known globally,” researchers said.
“While confractosuchus would not have specialised in eating dinosaurs, it would not have overlooked an easy meal, such as the young ornithopod remains found in its stomach,” Dr Matt White, an associate at the museum who led the research, said in the statement.
“It is likely dinosaurs constituted an important resource in the Cretaceous ecological food web.
“Given the lack of comparable global specimens, this prehistoric crocodile and its last meal will continue to provide clues to the relationships and behaviours of animals that inhabited Australia millions of years ago.”
The confractosuchus sauroktonos is the second crocodile that has been named from the Winton Formation. The rock bed has exposed numerous scientific discoveries in recent years, including a 96-million-year-old pterosaur.
Australian scientists say they’ve discovered a new species of crocodile, and its last meal may have been a dinosaur.
The crocodile, called a Broken Dinosaur Killer, was recovered on a sheep station in outback Queensland, and is believed to be more than 95 million years old.
Researchers say while piecing together the fossilised croc, they made a startling discovery — the partial remains of a young ornithopod dinosaur inside its stomach.
“It’s just extraordinary,” researcher Matt White from The Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum said.
“This is the first time that a crocodile has been discovered with dinosaur remains in its stomach,” Dr White said.
“It’s a world first.”
The fossilised bones were recovered from a sheep station in western Queensland. (Supplied: Australian Age of Dinosaurs)
The fossil was first discovered near Winton in 2010 by palaeontologists, and took more than six years to piece together.
It’s the first skeletal remains of an ornithopod reported in the region and the first evidence that crocodiles ate dinosaurs in Australia.
“This prehistoric crocodile and its last meal will continue to provide clues to the relationships and behaviours of animals that inhabited Australia millions of years ago,” Dr White said.
The discovery also suggests dinosaurs were an important part of the Cretaceous food web.
“Dinosaurs weren’t exactly top of the food chain but were part of an intricate web of mammals, pterosaurs, birds and crocodiles,” he said.
“What we’ve been able to demonstrate is the direct evidence of [crocodiles’] food source and that they were able to eat anything that came close enough.”
Researchers pieced the concretion together.(Supplied: Australian Age of Dinosaurs)
There is evidence that ornithopods, which were small plant eaters with beaks and cheeks full of teeth, roamed Earth more than 100 million years ago.
“Ornithopods were very cute little dinosaurs, probably a little bit bigger than a chicken at about 1.2 kilograms,” Dr White said.
“It would have looked something like Ducky from The Land Before Time.
“So you can imagine poor little Ducky crawling up onto the side of the bank and then a crocodile coming up and chomping it.”
Dr White said the bones were too fragile to be removed from the ground by conventional methods, so researchers used new technology to piece together an X-ray image of the fossil.
Dr White says the new discovery is one of the museum’s most exciting accessions.(Supplied: Australian Age of Dinosaurs)
The scanned data files were then used by Dr White to digitally prepare the specimen, a process that can take months of processing, so that a 3D reconstruction of the bones could be made.
“The technology that we’re using is drawing new life into what we can see within these fossils,” Dr White said.
“We may have other fossils out there around the world that actually have remains in their stomach and this new technology may help us discover that.
“It’s going to change how things are done.”