A newly discovered 45 million-year-old fossilized crocodile skull has been classified by paleontologists as a whole new kind of crocodile genus that has been appropriately named after the Egyptian God Heru, the same god who likely inspired the design of the Great Sphinx.
According to a study published in Royal Society Open Science, Herugavialis cairensis shares more with the Great Sphinx than just a name. It was found in the same rock formation that the Great Sphinx was carved from. On top of that, the Great Sphinx is famously missing the tip of its nose, just as the newly discovered crocodile skull seems to be missing the very tip of its snout.
There seems to be a running theme in the paleontology world of late: researchers are making grand discoveries from bones dug up decades earlier and left to gather dust in museum storerooms. This discovery is no different: it was originally excavated in the 1920s from northern Egypt’s Mokattam Formation, the limestone quarry used to build the pyramids of Giza and the Great Sphinx.
Scientists Used CT Scans to Correct a Crocodile Mix-Up in a German Museum
The skull spent nearly a century mislabeled and sitting in a German museum. Scientists originally thought it was a relative of the modern false gharial, a long-snouted fish-eating croc. An international team of researchers ran the skull through a high-tech micro-CT scanner that revealed internal anatomy that looks nothing like its alleged living relatives.
The three scans revealed distinct features, like “telescoped” eye sockets with raised rims and a blunt peak on its brain cavity that scientists have never seen in any other gharial relative. Computer analyses scored 331 physical traits, confirming that Herugavialis belonged on an entirely different evolutionary branch leading to the Indian gharial.
The Mediterranean region it called home was filled with warm, shallow water and a diverse array of crocodile species, which all came crashing down around 6 million years ago when global cooling and the drying of the Mediterranean wiped out the region’s crocs entirely.
Luckily, modern science is helping us track the animals that once called this neck of the world home tens of millions of years ago.
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