Around 95 million years ago, small crocodile-like creatures with strange, sheathed teeth burrowed along the shores of the Western Interior Seaway in what is now southwest Montana, a new study suggests.
The new research describes the first such creature ever discovered — a teenage croc nicknamed Elton that measured about 2 feet (60 centimeters) long from nose to tail tip. Elton's fossilized remains were discovered in 2021 during an organized dig in the Blackleaf geological formation, which dates to the middle of the Cretaceous period (145 million to 66 million years ago).
