A resemblance between a long-lost African crocodile and modern American crocs goes beyond the shared bump on their snouts.
New analyses of a roughly 7-million-year old skull from the extinct Crocodylus checchiai suggest that crocodiles journeyed from Africa to the Americas millions of years ago, researchers report July 23 in Scientific Reports. Unearthed in the 1930s, the fossil came from what’s now Libya and sat for decades in a museum. With CT scanning, scientists have now mapped the skull’s structure, revealing hidden anatomical features that tie the animal closely to…
