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Year:
2000
PLACE:
Gadoufaoua, Niger
Expedition members:
17
Fossil in focus:
Sarcosuchus imperator
Age:
middle Cretaceous, some 110 million years ago
Estimated adult length:
40 feet
Estimated weight:
ten tons
Quote:
“To visualize what can’t yet be seen—that’s the key to big fossil discoveries.”
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Go into the bush with Paul Sereno to get up close and personal with SuperCroc.
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SuperCroc
You’ll find interactive maps, models, photos of SuperCroc and bios of paleontologist Paul Sereno and herpetologist Brady Barr on our National Geographic site.
Project Exploration’s SuperCroc Site
Get inside SuperCroc’s head—and take an interactive tour of its skeleton. This site includes tons of information
about the fossil discovery, an extensive image gallery, classroom activities, and interviews with the scientists, sculptors, and artists involved
in bringing SuperCroc to life.
Dinosaur Expedition 2000
Witness paleontology in action! See a firsthand account of the challenges facing Paul Sereno and his team on their four-month expedition to the world’s largest desert and follow their tracks as they find the bones of one of the largest crocodilians that ever lived—an animal they came to call SuperCroc.
Crocodilians
How do crocodiles communicate? Hear juvenile distress calls, threatening adult hisses, and courtship bellows—and learn more about all 23 species of modern crocodilians—at this comprehensive site. Find out how you can help prevent the extinction of the highly endangered Chinese alligator.
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| Photographs by Michael Hettwer |
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This Week’s Questions. Click on a question for a full response.
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| Name: | Jerrad Kinsella |
| Subject: | How big was SuperCroc’s brain? |
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| Question 1: |
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| The brain size of the average crocodile is
pretty small. Would SuperCroc’s brain be much bigger? If so, by how much? |
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| Sereno’s Answer: |
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| SuperCroc’s brain is actually remarkably small, and it goes to
show that you don’t have to have a big brain to dominate the area you live in. The ‘thinking’ part
of the brain (the forebrain) would have been about the size of a walnut. By CT scanning the skull, we can see
the space the brain occupied and reconstruct it; this is something we want to do in the future. SuperCroc’s brain
wouldn’t have differed one bit in design from a modern crocodilian brain, but it would have been larger. As
animals of similar design get larger, their brains also increase in volume but at a slower rate. We won’t know
how much larger SuperCroc’s brain is until we CT scan the skull. |
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| Name: | L. Herron |
| Subject: | Extinction |
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| Question 2: |
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| What caused the extinction of Sarcosuchus? |
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| Sereno’s Answer: |
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| Well, Sarcosuchus went extinct before the end of the dinosaur era.
This animal is about 110 million years old. We can find close relatives in the sediments of Africa up to about 90
million years ago, and then we don’t see these giants anymore. I think it had more to do with climate change than
with any kind of asteroid or instantaneous extraterrestrial event. Given the size of Sarcosuchus and its need for
habitat with very large rivers, it would have been susceptible to extinction from a changing climate. |
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| Name: | Mansha Manohar |
| Subject: | Where would SuperCroc live today? |
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| Question 3: |
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| If SuperCroc existed today, where do you think it would be living? |
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| Sereno’s Answer: |
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| It would be living in the very largest rivers, such as the Nile,
Amazon, Yangtze, and Mississippi—not far upstream from the mouth of the river. |
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| Name: | Anna |
| Subject: | Any chance of cloning SuperCroc? |
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| Question 4: |
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| Is it possible to obtain DNA from the remains that were found? Is there any
chance of cloning SuperCroc? |
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| Sereno’s Answer: |
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| There may be some chance of finding small fragments of DNA in the fossil
bone, but these would be very short fragments that are very difficult to identify as belonging to SuperCroc rather than
to a variety of living animals that have come into contact with the fossil, such as bacteria, worms, or humans. All living
things have a lot of DNA sequences in common, and it is these short common sequences that we are best at finding. We
will never be able to clone SuperCroc, because cloning requires complete living ova, or single-celled eggs, and a complete
nucleus, including all of the DNA. It is fair to say that we will never find these in the fossil record. |
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| Name: | Jodi Blumenthal |
| Subject: | Will you dig for more? |
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| Question 5: |
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| Will you ever resume digging for a more complete Sarcosuchus
imperator skeleton, or have you found enough pieces of various animals to satisfy most questions
regarding the species? |
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| Sereno’s Answer: |
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| We have a lot of the skeleton already. We will eventually go back to
Niger, and when we find more, we will collect only the very best material. We tend to “raise the bar” on
what is collected when it overlaps with well-preserved material already in hand. Of course, we would be delighted to
find either a hand or a foot—parts we don’t have. |
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