A fearsome crocodile species that roamed earth 45 million years ago has been discovered by boffins.
The prehistoric croc has been named ‘Asiatosuchus oenotriensis’ and is a distant relative of the present-day Nile and Saltwater crocodiles.
The large reptile inhabited the region of Zamora, about 42 miles north of Salamanca in Spain.
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The prehistoric species was identified from fossil remains unearthed from the wine region of Tierra del Vino, located in the provinces of Zamora and Salamanca, in the late 1980s.
Its name means ‘belonging to the Land of Wine’, in reference to its home region.
Including an almost complete skull and left jaw, the remains have been analysed several times in the past, but not in the same detail as the latest study.
The species was announced by palaeontologists at the University of Salamanca (USAL) and the National University of Distance Education (UNED) in Madrid.
Asiatosuchus oenotriensis is said to be closely related to Asiatosuchus germanicus, a species from the middle Eocene period that lived in Germany.
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It is also a distant relative of the present-day Nile crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus) in Africa and the saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus) found in Australia, Southeast Asia, and Micronesia.
The research was published in ‘The Anatomical Record’, a peer-reviewed scientific journal covering anatomy, as reported by What’s The Jam.
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