'Swamp King' croc identified in Australia

'Swamp King' croc identified in Australia

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Australia is land of creatures that may not always be as sweet lookimg as Kangaroos. Videos of scary spiders living inside Aussie houses do rounds on social media periodically. So its perhaps fitting that scientists would identify a giant crocodile or something there. This is exactly what has happened.

A new species of a crocodile, informally called the 'Swamp King' has been identified by the scientists in Australia. The crocodile lived in prehistoric times, about 5.33 and 2.58 million years ago.

The croc wasmore than 16 feet (five metres) long and was one of the top predators in Australia, as per press release from University of Queensland.

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The creature has been named Paludirex vincenti. Paludirex means swamp kingt in Latin while 'vincenti' honours Geoff Vincent, who first found the fossiled skull of the crocodile.

Just to get a sense of how scary this crocodile was, it should be mentioned that it had more heavy-set skull than largest living crocodile today. This may also translate to greater bite force.

As per the university, Paludirex vincenti was one of top predators in Australia and was able to eat giant prehistoric marsupials.

However, the reason why this crocodile went extinct is not yet known.