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Published online 13 June 2006 | Nature | doi:10.1038/news060612-4
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Slouching out of Gondwana
The ancestor of today's crocodiles was probably Australian.
Modern crocodiles and alligators may be able to trace their roots back to Australia, say palaeontologists who have dug up the scaly beasts' most primitive known relative near a remote outback town.
The new crocodile-like species, unearthed in rural Queensland by a team led by Steven Salisbury of the University of Queensland in Brisbane, lived between 95 and 98 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period.
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