Search Here

Paleontologists discovered the fossilized remains of the biggest ocean-living crocodile in the world, buried deep at the edge of Sahara dessert. This creature is estimated twice the size of anything that has ever been seen. The discovered remains indicate towards a crocodile that must have been at 16-feet long, weighed nearly half a ton and was so tough that it endured 60-million-year old mass extinction. Also known as Machimosaurus Rex, this crocodile's weight is estimated to be at least 6600 pounds and must have been as long as 32-feet. It may have appeared like the crocodiles today with an exception of narrow snout that allowed it to swim in the ocean. He may have been the largest predator in the ocean that separates Europe from Asia, over 100 million years ago. "This is an incredibly big crocodile. It is twice as big as a present day marine crocodile," University of Bologna's Federico Fanti, who was part of the team that made the discovery with support from the National Geographic Society Committee for Research and Exploration, told FoxNews.com.

"The skull itself is as big I am," said Fanti, whose discovery was detailed in a study in the journal Cretaceous Research. "Just the skull is more than five feet long. It's a massive crocodile," said Discovery News

The team of researchers and Fanti, supported by National Geographic Society and Committee for Research and Exploration, discovered these fossils buried just a few inches below the sediment in Tunisia, on the edge of Sahara Dessert, the country known for its rich fossil reserves. "This one was a big surprise, not because we found fossils, but we found beautiful ones," Fanti said. The skull took two days to uncover, and the "rest of the body was just lying there," reveals Washington Post