A 7-million-year-old fossil in Peru has shed new light on the origin of crocodiles, giving palaeontologists more clues as to how the creatures evolved into what they are today.
The prehistoric crocodile fossil found in Peru has given an insight into how all freshwater creatures in the Andean country first came to land from the sea.
According to a Peruvian research team that analysed jaw and skull remains of the species, the animal likely would have probably crossed the Atlantic Ocean to the coast of South America.
This was believed to be how the animals eventually came to populate what is now southern Peru.
Researcher Rodolfo Salas said his team had collected partial skeletons from the species in recent years.
After finding a jawbone in Peru’s Sacaco desert in 2020, they understood how these animals evolved after living in saltwater.
“The new species of crocodile that we are presenting to the world lived in Sacaco 7 million years ago,” Salas said of the species, which he dubbed Sacacosuchus cordovai.
The crocodilian ancestor would have been 4 metres (13 feet) long, he added.
Skeletons of prehistoric animals have been found in Sacaco before.
Experts say that millions of years ago the desert was a deep seabed inhabited by whales, giant sharks and crocodiles, among other marine species.
“We have concluded... that all marine crocodiles were animals with long and thin faces, and that there were two morphotypes,” Salas said.
“One that fed almost exclusively on fish and another that had a much more general diet.”
The studies were published last week in the British scientific journal The Royal Society.
Southern Peru is a rich source of prehistoric remains.
In March, a team of palaeontologists led by Salas presented the skull fossil of a 12-meter-long (39-foot-long) “sea monster,” a predator that lived 36 million years ago in an ancient ocean along the central coast of Peru.
