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  • 2021-04-20 (xsd:date)
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  • Is This the Largest Crocodile Skull Ever Found? (en)
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  • In April 2021, a photograph started to circulate on social media that supposedly showed a person kneeling next to the skull of the largest crocodile that ever lived: Purussaurus truly was a giant species of caiman that lived circa 8 million years ago, but the above-displayed picture does not feature a Purussaurus fossil. This is actually a model created by the company Crawley Creatures, a model design company from the United Kingdom that makes everything from movie props to museum displays. Furthermore, the skull in this picture was modeled off of a different extinct crocodile species, Deinosuchus, not Purussaurus. Although it doesn't feature this specific skull, Crawley Creature's 2011 showreel provides a good look at the type of work this company has done: Jez Gibson-Harris, the creative director of his company Crawley Creatures, told us that the model skull was sculpted in clay, moulded and a fibre glass cast was made which is what you see. While Gibson-Harris couldn't recall exactly when this model was created, he said that it was likely for Prehistoric Park or Walking with Monsters, two docu-fiction series that were produced in 2005 and 2006. Here's the Deinosuchus scene from Prehistoric Park: Deinosuchus, which translates to terrible crocodile, lived during the late Cretaceous period about 80 million years ago. Adults grew to nearly 36 feet in length and weighed more than 6 tons. The Western Australia Museum writes: Here's a photograph of a genuine Deinosuchus fossil on display at the Natural History Museum of Utah: While the viral picture shows a model, not a fossil, of a Deinosuchus, this picture has been circulating online for years with the claim that it features a Purussaurus skull. The Purussaurus, which could grow to more than 40 feet in length, went extinct during the Late Miocene Period about 8 million years ago. In 2015, a team of researchers in Brazil published a paper that found Purussaurus' bite could exert 11.5 tons of pressure, which is 20 times the strength of a great white shark. The researchers also answered the all-important question of who would win in a fight: a Purussaurus or a Tyrannosaurus? Aline Ghilardi, one of the co-authors of the study, told BBC Brasil: (en)
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