Scientists have identified a new genus of a fearsome crocodile-like creature that once hunted off what is now Dorset’s Jurassic Coast.
The remains of the 2-metre-long animal were discovered by fossil hunters after a series of landslips on to a beach in 2017, and the newly recognised beast has been named Turnersuchus hingleyae in honour of the finders, Paul Turner and Lizzie Hingley.
The “Charmouth crocodile”, as it is known in Dorset, is on display at Lyme Regis Museum, and the new research is likely to lead to an increase in visitors keen to come face to face with it.
Though it would have looked like a crocodile and is colloquially known as a “marine crocodile”, the animal is a type of thalattosuchian, often described as a sister species to modern crocodiles’ ancestors, and would have been at large in the early Jurassic period.
Paul Davis, a geology curator at Lyme Regis Museum, said the original discovery – and now the pinpointing of its origins – were thrilling. “It’s very exciting they have named a new genus of the marine crocodile. It’s so special for us.”
Davis said there were some good remains of more modern versions of the animal and a few older ones, but none from the age of the specimen found in Dorset.
Because of its relatively long, slender snout, Turnersuchus hingleyae would have looked similar to modern gharial crocodiles, found in major river systems in the north of India. The region of the skull that housed jaw muscles was particularly large, possibly suggesting the ability to take fast bites, meaning it could grab fast-moving fish, octopus or squid.
Hingley was delighted that what she and Turner found turned out to be so special. “I think it’s fantastic – we didn’t expect to find anything so rare. It’s unbelievable it’s turned out to be something that nobody has found before,” she said.
It was a hot May day when they made the find. “Paul found the first block and said there’s bone everywhere on this. We chucked it in a bag and carried on.” She put it on a fossil collectors’ Facebook page. “Within 10 minutes, the Natural History Museum was messaging me.”
Helped by a representative from the Charmouth Heritage Coast Centre, Hingley and Turner revisited the site every day for weeks to make sure they recovered every possible piece as it was washed out of a landslip, before it could be destroyed by the sea. Body parts including the head, backbone and limbs were found.
Remarkably, once the finds had been made, other local people came forward to reveal they had parts of the “crocodile”, and these have been collected with those found by Hingley and Turner.
The new findings are described in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
