Sprinting Crocs With ‘Legs Like Greyhounds’ Once Ruled the Caribbean

Over the past 3 decades, paleontologists person been uncovering sharp, serrated, prehistoric teeth connected Caribbean islands. The unusual part? According to scientists, the owners of specified teeth—large onshore predators—were ne'er expected to beryllium there.

But an planetary squad of researchers has recovered that millions of years ago, a freakishly gangly crocodile-like onshore predator called a sebecid roamed the Caribbean—surviving determination until astir 5 cardinal years ago, agelong aft its South American relatives died retired astir 11 cardinal years ago. The findings bolster the mentation that onshore bridges oregon a concatenation of islands erstwhile connected the Caribbean to South America.

In 2023, researchers recovered different fossilized bony successful the Dominican Republic, this clip with 2 vertebrae, allowing them to yet place the remains arsenic belonging to sebecids. As elaborate successful a study published Wednesday successful Proceedings of the Royal Society B, experts dated the fossils to betwixt 7.14 and 4.57 cardinal years ago—more than 3 cardinal years aft their South American cousins vanished. “That emotion of uncovering the fossil and realizing what it is, it’s indescribable,” survey pb writer Lazaro Viñola Lopez, a paleobiologist astatine the Florida Museum of Natural History, said successful a depository statement.

According to the statement, immoderate sebecids—described arsenic gangly “crocodile[s] built similar a greyhound”—could scope up to 20 feet (6.1 meters) long. They were nutrient eaters, chasing aft their prey connected 4 agelong legs. In South America, they were the lone members of the Notosuchia—a ample radical of extinct crocodilians—to past the infamous asteroid that decimated the dinosaurs 66 cardinal years ago. With that pesky contention nary longer successful play, sebecids rapidly roseate up the nutrient chain.

But however could the land-based predators person reached islands successful the Caribbean? The researchers accidental these results enactment the GAARlandia hypothesis—the thought that, millions of years ago, either onshore bridges oregon land chains allowed South American animals similar sebecids to scope the Caribbean. When the passageway disappeared, sebecids would person been isolated from immoderate menace caused their relatives successful South America to vanish millions of years earlier them.

If researchers corroborate that the unusual teeth from different islands besides belonged to sebecids, it means these apex predators impacted the region’s ecology for millions of years. That’s contempt the information that “you wouldn’t person been capable to foretell this looking astatine the modern ecosystem,” said Jonathan Bloch, a co-author of the survey and curator of vertebrate paleontology astatine the Florida Museum of Natural History. Today, astir Caribbean predators, specified arsenic birds, snakes, and adjacent crocodiles, are importantly smaller.

Nevertheless, the survey goes to amusement that wherever there’s smoke, there’s astir apt a fire—or successful this case, a sprinting, extinct croc built similar a greyhound.