‘Drop crocs’ that climbed trees lived in Australia, research finds
The oldest crocodile eggshells have been uncovered in Australia, reportedly showing evidence of ‘drop crocs’ which climbed trees to hunt prey underneath. The 55-million-year-old eggshells were discovered in the backyard of a sheep farmer in Queensland. The findings were published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
The eggshells came from an extinct family of crocodiles known as mekosuchines. These creatures lived in inland waters when Australia was connected to Antarctica and South America.
The ‘drop crocs’ were a “bizarre idea,” the study’s co-author, Professor Michael Archer, but added that some were “perhaps hunting like leopards, dropping out of trees on any unsuspecting thing they fancied for diner.”
Professor Archer, a palaeontologist from the University of New South Wales, said that the mekosuchine family of crocodiles, known to reach lengths of around 5 metres, were abundant 55 million years ago. They existed long before the modern saltwater and freshwater species arrived in the continent 3.8 million years ago.
The ‘drop croc’ eggshells were found decades ago but it is only recently that they have been analysed thanks to Spanish scientists. The findings add to previous discoveries of the mekosuchine fossils found in deposits in Queensland that were dated to be 25-million-years-old.
In recent decades, it has been discovered that Australia was once home to a lush forest. The Queensland sight is home to some of the country’s oldest fossil sites.
“This forest was also home to the world’s oldest-known songbirds, Australia’s earliest frogs and snakes, a wide range of small mammals with South American links, as well as one of the world’s oldest known bats,” Dr Michael Stein, a co-author of the report, said.
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