The Guinness Book of World Records recognizes Lolong, a 20-foot-3 beast, as the world’s largest crocodile (he passed away in 2013, but the record remains). Anything bigger than that was the stuff of legend and cheap Syfy movies, until some scientists just had to start digging around in Tunisia, where they discovered “the world’s largest sea-dwelling crocodile.”
Now, before you run to the store for Crocodile Repellent (a product that I’m pretty sure Batman told me exists), know that this killer croc isn’t going to crawl out of your toilet. The three-ton Machimosaurus rex roamed the Earth some 130 million years ago, which honestly, is still too soon.
“Massive” is how lead author Federico Fanti of the University of Bologna described the crocodile. “It’s just big. It’s almost the size of a bus. It definitely was at the top of the food chain at the time, at least in this particular locality.”
Fanti and his team, supported by National Geographic Society Committee for Research and Exploration, found the fossils buried below just a few inches of sediment on the edge of the Sahara Desert in Tunisia, a country rich with fossils. (Via)
Keep the fossils away from eccentric millionaires. They might be tempted to pull a Jurassic Park, and bring these bus-sized crocodiles back to life.
No thank you.
(Via the Washington Post)
