Reconstructing Dead Aussie Crocs

These are reconstructions of some of the extinct crocodiles that I have worked on. The reconstructions have been made in Photoshop, taking a scan of a similar modern crocodile, rearranging the elements to more accurately fit the extinct crocodile and blending the parts together.

Kambara murgonensis is the first of two crocodiles described from the Eocene (54.6 million year old) site at Murgon, south-east Queensland. I described this one in 1993 with Ralph Molnar from the Queensland Museum and my mate John Scanlon. The paper appeared in the German journal Kaupia. The second species from Murgon, K. implexidens, was described in 1996 by my then student Steve Salisbury and I. It is very similar to K. murgonensis.

In recent years, we've been doing some interesting work using CAT scans on croc material from Murgon. The results of these investigations are being published starting with the paper I wrote with Robinson and Kemp in 1995.

Baru huberi is a small to medium-size crocodile found in Oligo-Miocene deposits at Riversleigh, north western Queensland. It's named in honour of the Recktor of the Friedrich-Wilhelms-Universitat, Bonn, Germany, who provided financial assistance for my studies in Germany.

It was first identified at White Hunter Site but subsequently it has been found in a number of the older Riversleigh sites. It was named along with three other crocodiles from White Hunter Site in a paper published in the Memoirs of the Queensland Museum in 1997.

Baru wickeni comes from D-Site at Riversleigh and was the first new genus of crocodile that I named. In 1990 I teamed up with Peter Murray and Dirk Megirian to describe some croc material from D-Site and Bullock Creek in the Northern Territory which we named Baru darrowi. It was only later when more complete material was available that I was able to separate out the Riversleigh material into a new species, Baru wickeni.

Baru is an aboriginal name for a crocodile ancestor and the specific name is in honour of Tony Wicken from the UNSW, who provided me with a scholarship that allowed me to finish my studies. Baru darrowi was named after Paul Darrow, an actor from the TV series Blake's Seven.

Possibly the cutest little crocs I've worked on are species of Mekosuchus. First identified from Pleistocene deposits in New Caledonia, I've erected two new species from the Miocene sites at Riversleigh. Mekosuchus sanderi (pictured) would have been may be 1 metre long and, like all species of Mekosuchus, had a short, dog-like muzzle. It comes from Gag Site.

Indications are that these crocs were living much the same way as living goannas (which are absent from Riversleigh) and may possibly have climbed trees.
Closely related to Mekosuchus is this little tacker that, Trilophosuchus rackhami. It also comes from the Miocene Gag Site at Riversleigh and has three crests running along the top of the skull. The function of these crests can only be guessed at but they may have strengthened the skull. Why this little croc needed a strong skull is anybody's guess!

The first species of Quinkana was named by my mate Ralph Molnar while I was still in high school. Quinkana fortirostrum (pictured) was a land-living croc with teeth like steak-knives lined up into a mouth-wide hatchet that could slice chunks of flesh off of a living animal.

While Q. fortirostrum may have reached lengths of 3 metres, Q. meboldi from the Oligo-Miocene White Hunter Site at Riversleigh was much smaller, perhaps only half the size of its' Pleistocene descendant.

 

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