Cretaceous sediments in an unexplored area of Tunisia have provided researchers with the fossilized remains of a 10-meter-long ancient saltwater crocodile.
The new species has been named Machimosaurus Rex and is described in an article recently published in Cretaceous Research. It is a specimen very similar to the Machimosaurus Hugii, found in France.
The articulated remains were found in December 2014 during a prospecting expedition in the town of Touil el Mhahir in Tataouine, southern Tunisia. The body was lying face down with the head curved to the right side. After separating them from the sandy and clayey sediments, Federico Fanti of the University of Bologna and his team were able to identify fragments of the skull, teeth, vertebrae, ribs, humerus and osteoderms (bony plates of the skin) as belonging to an unknown species. so far.
The skull is 1.6 meters long, so it is estimated that the total length of the individual would be around 9.6 meters.
Machimosaurus Rex belongs to the lineage of Thalatosuchian Teleosaurids , marine crocodilians that were thought to be extinct at the end of the Jurassic. However, the new species has been dated to between 120 and 130 million years old, which makes it evidence that they survived until the Cretaceous.
This giant crocodile was probably a predator in lacustrine environments, the predominant landscape in this part of Africa during the early Cretaceous. Its ecology would have been similar to that of today's semiaquatic crocodiles, which hunt both aquatic and terrestrial prey. Its short, rounded teeth, similar to those of other members of the genus machimosaurus , indicate that it fed on hard-shelled vertebrates.
In the same site, many remains of turtles have appeared, some up to a meter long, possibly part of the crocodile's diet.
By comparison, the largest freshwater crocodile found so far is Sarcosuchus Imperator, which lived about 110.5 million years ago and was up to 40 feet long.