A previously undiscovered relative of the crocodile that lived about 170 million years ago has been identified by scientists. <\/p>\n
A team from the University of Portsmouth and Hassan II University of Casablanca found fossils of the ancient reptile in Morocco’s Atlas Mountains. <\/p>\n
The animal – which has been named ctenosuchus tenuidens – had a distinct long and narrow snout filled with needle-like teeth, unlike any of its known relatives. <\/p>\n
Researchers say the teeth suggest it hunted smaller, softer prey, making it unique among long-snouted crocodiles. <\/p>\n
“If it caught a big fish, and the fish wriggled, those delicate teeth would get smashed,” said Hamzah Imran from the University of Portsmouth, the lead author of the research.<\/p>\n
“We think the animal was probably eating soft prey like shrimp, worms and tiny fish, so nothing that would break its teeth.<\/p>\n
“These feeding habits make this particular species very different to other long-snouted crocodiles, so it really is quite an exciting discovery.”<\/p>\n
It is the animal’s unusual comb-like teeth that led to its name. In Ancient Greek, “cteno” means comb, “suchus” means crocodile and “tenuidens” means thin teeth.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"A previously undiscovered relative of the crocodile that lived about 170 million years ago has been identified by…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":801008,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[26],"tags":[90,56,54,55,4407],"class_list":["post-801007","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-wildlife","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-wildlife"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801007","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=801007"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/801007\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/801008"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=801007"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=801007"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=801007"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}