CROCODILES haven鈥檛 always been fearsome predators. A fossil found in Madagascar shows that the
island was once home to a pug-nosed vegetarian croc.
鈥淚t鈥檚 the weirdest crocodile ever found,鈥� says Greg Buckley of Roosevelt
University in Chicago. Unlike modern crocs, which have flat skulls and long
snouts filled with sharp teeth, the 1.2-metre fossil has a blunt snout,
leaf-shaped teeth and a tall, rounded skull like a bulldog. Named
Simosuchus, or pug-nosed crocodile, it lived 70 million years ago and was
probably terrestrial, using its head to dig burrows (Nature (vol 405, p 941).
Its teeth resemble those of iguanas and plant-eating dinosaurs called
ankylosaurs, which were common elsewhere in the world but unknown in Madagascar
at that time. Buckley speculates that Simosuchus may have evolved to
fill the plant-eating niche that ankylosaurs held elsewhere.
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