Remains of ancient Olduvai Gorge crocodile identified

Tanzanian and American scientists have identified the remains of a 7.5-metre-long man-eating crocodile in the Olduvai Gorge. They estimate its age to be 1.8 million years. They guess it could be the largest predator ancient humans in the region have ever encountered, adding that the remains are now subjected to advanced research in the US. Dr Fidelis Masao, a researcher in the world-famous gorge, said in an interview that the remains will be returned to Tanzania some three years from now “unlike our dinosaur skeletons that were taken to German but have not been returned”. “The dinosaur has not been brought back mainly following legal complications because Tanzania was under the German colonial rule when it was discovered but this is a completely different case,” he noted. The researcher explained that the discovery was impeccable proof the environment of those ancient times enabled such creatures to survive, while that would likely be very difficult now. “The discovery of the remains of the mammoth crocodile also means that more tourists will visit Tanzania after the researchers in the US are through with their analysis and the remains are back here,” he added. Chris Brochu, a vertebrate palaeontologist at the University of Iowa in the US, argued in a recent article published in the New Scientist that he would not guarantee that the crocodiles in question killed ancient humans “only that they were certainly biting them”. Ancient hominid bones discovered by Mary and Louis Leakey in the same sediments bear distinct bite marks likely to have been inflicted by large crocodiles. Yet, most researchers have assumed that the gashes were delivered by the same species of crocodiles that prowl the banks of the Nile today. Not so, claims Brochu, who re-analysed numerous incomplete fossils, the most recent of which was unearthed in 2007 by his co-authors Robert Blumenschine at Rutgers University in New Brunswick, New Jersey, and Jackson Njau of the National Natural History Museum in Arusha, Tanzania. Though roughly the same size as the reptilian denizens of the Nile, the Olduvai crocodiles had thinner, more flared snouts and large horns more characteristic of Madagascan crocodiles that went extinct in the past few thousand years. “The discovery of C. anthropophagus points to far more diversity in African crocodiles in the past 2.5 million years than thought,” argues Brochu, adding: “People have always perceived crocodiles as these slowly evolving, living fossils. That’s just nonsense.”He says his team has not found many fossils belonging to C. anthropophagus, and none that is complete, “so it’s impossible to determine its precise relationship to modern Nile crocodiles or when the man-eaters went extinct”. But, Brochu has little doubt that C. anthropophagus threatened the ancient hominids who called Olduvai Gorge home and would have been drawn to a nearby source of fresh water.According to the palaeontologist’s team, larger crocodiles would be capable of consuming hominids completely, leaving no trace.

SOURCE: THE GUARDIAN