Fossil for Sale

Paleontologists have made the most important discovery to date at the Arlington Archosaur Site, a prolific fossil site in North Arlington, Texas. The disassembled skull of a crocodile with two and a half inch long teeth that lived nearly 100 million years ago has been unearthed.

We have over 50 bones exposed,” said The University of Texas at Arlington dinosaurs lecturer Derek Main, who heads the project. “They are truly impressive. The teeth measure 6.5 centimeters, larger than my thumb.”

To date, more dinosaur fossils have been recovered from the Arlington Archosaur Site, where excavation began little more than a year ago, than from any other site in the Dallas-Fort Worth area. The site lies within Cretaceous rocks, formed 95 million years ago when Arlington was the beachhead for a giant sea that divided the continent.

The site has yielded fossils from various species of animals, including dinosaurs. A skeleton of a large herbivorous “duck billed” dinosaur was excavated from the northern hillside at the site. Crocodile fossils are among the most commonly found.

Main said the site is unique because it is a major dinosaur excavation in the middle of a large metropolitan setting and it preserves many fossils from different animals. he site also has fossils from turtles, lungfish, fish and sharks. The excavation of the Arlington Archosaur Site began in the spring of 2008 when the Huffines Group obtained the property and granted land access to UT Arlington.

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An ancient fossil crocodile coated in armadillo-like body armor was unveiled yesterday at an environmental museum in Brazil.

It was 6.6 feet (2 meters) long, weighed about 265 pounds (120 kilograms), and had a relatively wide head with a narrow, toothy snout.

Body armor has never been “found in any other fossil or living crocodile species,” Ismar de Souza Carvalho, a paleontologist at the Federal University in Rio de Janeiro, said via email.

And “the strangeness did not stop there,” Thiago Marinho, a paleontologist with the Federal University, added in an email. “This crocodyliform could [chew] like mammals do, like we do.”

Most modern crocs simply use their powerful jaws to clamp down on their prey. But the fossil crocodile could move its lower jaw forward and backward, using its teeth to tear into dried meat, roots, pine branches, and mollusks, Marinho said.

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