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The biggest sea-dwelling crocodile ever found has turned up in the Tunisian desert. The whopper of a prehistoric predator grew to over 30 feet long (nearly ten meters) and weighed three tons.
Paleontologists have dubbed the new species Machimosaurus rex and describe it Monday in the journal Cretaceous Research.
Although the recovered remains are fragmentary, enough remained in the 120-million-year-old rock to identify the reptile as the largest known member of a peculiar lineage of crocodiles that spent their lives almost entirely at sea.
“This is a neat new discovery from a part of the world that hasn’t been well-explored for fossils,” says University of Edinburgh paleontologist Stephen Brusatte, who was not involved with the new study.
Source, click here.
Whoa, whoa, whoa…Jaws was, I believe, 35ft long and is not dependent on the surface for oxygen, or quickly exhausted/stressed as a large reptile would be. Heck of a magnificent creature though!