These reports Sky News† The fossilized remains of a crocodile, nicknamed Confractosuchus sauroktonos, were found on a large sheep farm in Queensland. It is believed that these remains are more than 95 million years old.

While the researchers were busy assembling the crocodile’s remains, they found the skeletal remains of a small juvenile ornithopod in its stomach. According to scientists, this is the first evidence that crocodiles ate dinosaurs in Australia.

‘extremely rare’

“The discovery of a small ornithopod in the intestines of a fossilized crocodile is extremely rare, as there are only a few examples around the world of animals that ate dinosaurs,” says the Australian Age Museum of Dinosaurs. Sky News.

The fossil was first discovered and excavated by museum staff and volunteers in 2010. But the bones were too brittle and densely packed into a piece of rock to be removed. Therefore, a special technique had to be used to find out exactly where the bones were in the rock. This has taken years.

thigh bones

Dinosaur bones were also found among the crocodile bones. This indicates that the crocodile either killed the animal on the spot or captured it shortly after its death, according to the scientists. One of the ornithopod’s thighs was torn in half, and the other femur was bitten so hard that it left a tooth mark in the bone.