Scientists find a whopping 7 species of ancient crocs in one patch of Amazon jungle

Scientists find a whopping 7 species of ancient crocs in one patch of Amazon jungle

The crocs were about 13 million years old and were able to coexist due to an abundance of food in the area at the time.

A patch of territory in the western Amazon was home to seven different types of crocodilians some 13 million years ago, scientists have found.

New fossils were discovered in the region that show the area was home to species as large as a car to a smaller croc specialized at crushing clams, providing insight into the amount of biodiversity that is still present today in the Amazon, according to a USA Today report.

In today’s Amazon, you won’t usually find more than three species of crocodilians in one patch of jungle, but researchers found that wasn’t necessarily the case millions of years ago.

They discovered two rock outcroppings near the cityof Iquitos in Peru that had fossil evidence for seven species of croc that lived in the same area at the same time.

Scientists believe that they were able to do this because the wetland had a rich variety of food that allowed them to coexist without coming into competition for prey.

The species they found included Purussaurus neivensis, which ate mammals and turtles, and Mourasuchus atopus, which was a very large crocodile that ate fish by filtering water through its mouth.

Three of the species were new to scientists. The skull of one was discovered in 2006 when the pilot of the scientists’ motorboat jumped to shore and crushed it. The creature had a shovel-shaped snout and was certainly a bizarre sight. Researchers believe it rooted around in the bottom of bodies of water searching for clams and using its back teeth to crush prey.

Two other crocs were discovered — varieties of caiman that are known to scientists as “crusher crocs.”

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