Giant croc roamed South-East Queensland, according to reports in ABC News and ScienceDaily 14 June 2021 and Scientific Reports 9 June 2021, doi: 10.1038/s41598-021-91717-y.
A group of scientists led by Jorgo Ristevski of University of Queensland have studied a piece of skull from an extinct crocodile, originally found in the nineteenth century, and stored in the Queensland Museum. The crocodile has been named Gunggamarandu maunala, meaning “river boss” in a local aboriginal language.
The crocodile belonged to a group of crocodiles named Tomistominae, which have never been found in Australia before, but their fossilised remains have been found on every continent except Antarctica. The scientists concluded their specimen was closely related to a group of Tomistominae that once lived in Europe. They wrote: “These results hint at a potential ghost lineage between European and Australian tomistomines going back more than 50 million years”. One living species Tomistoma schlegelii is now found in the Malay Peninsula and parts of Indonesia.
The researchers estimate the crocodile their specimen came from would have been seven metres long and claim “The cranial proportions of the Gunggamarandu maunala holotype specimen indicate it is the largest crocodyliform yet discovered from Australia”.
Links: ABC, ScienceDaily
Editorial Comment: This extinct crocodile fits the overall trend of crocodiles (and many other creatures) – they used to be bigger, were more widespread and there were more species of them. These days crocodiles are only found in tropical and subtropical regions, and do not live in the wild in Europe because the climate is too harsh. However, the evolutionists’ imaginary “ghost lineages” will not explain this.
This fossil is a good reminder that the overall history of living creatures on earth is going from a rich and widespread diversity, including many giant animals, to many extinctions and few really big animals. This pattern certainly matches the Biblical history of the world i.e. In the beginning God created a “very good” world where animals that could grow to large sizes, survived and thrived in the lush vegetation and mild climate. However, that world was destroyed in the worldwide Flood of Noah, and since then extremes of climate and harsh environments resulted in many creatures dying or shrinking.
Creation Research News 30 June 2021
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