![Giant Crocodile Discovered With Baby Dinosaur Still In Its Stomach](https://images.ladbible.com/resize?type=webp&quality=70&width=3840&fit=contain&gravity=auto&url=https://images.ladbiblegroup.com/v3/assets/bltcd74acc1d0a99f3a/bltda6704f59dde00f4/620d4e0004f922519e15f3fe/KW7BHR.jpeg)
Scientists have discovered that a 93-million-year-old crocodile had eaten a baby dinosaur shortly before its death, having used nuclear techniques to scan the fossilised stomach contents.
The crocodile’s remains were found inside a large boulder in Central Queensland, Australia, back in 2010.
Now a team from the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum and the University of New England have used advanced nuclear and synchrotron imaging to confirm that the hungry croc had eaten a juvenile dinosaur before it died, having published their findings in the journal Godwana Research.
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The crocodile has been named Confractosuchus sauroktonos, which translates as ‘the broken crocodile dinosaur killer’, and measured about 2-2.5m in length. The ‘broken’ part of its name refers to the fact that it was discovered in a huge, shattered boulder.
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Senior Instrument Scientist Dr Joseph Bevitt, co-author of the study, said: “The fossilised remains were found in a large boulder. Concretions often form when organic matter, or say a crocodile, sinks to the bottom of a river.
"Because the environment is rich in minerals, within days the mud around the organism can solidify and harden because the presence of bacteria."
According to a press release from the Australian Nuclear Science and Technology Organisation (ANSTO), early neutron imaging scans of one rock fragment from the boulder detected bones of the small chicken-sized juvenile dinosaur in the gut, an ornithopod that has not yet been formally identified by species.
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The dinosaur bones were embedded within the dense ironstone rock, and were ‘serendipitously discovered’ when the sample was ‘exposed to the penetrative power of neutrons’.
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Bevitt said: “In the initial scan in 2015, I spotted a buried bone in there that looked like a chicken bone with a hook on it and thought straight away that it was a dinosaur.
“Human eyes had never seen it previously, as it was, and still is, totally encased in rock.”
The finding led to further hi-res scans using Dingo - Australia’s only neutron imaging instrument, which can be used to produce 2D and 3D images of a solid object and reveal concealed features within it – and the synchrotron X-ray Imaging and Medical Beamline.
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“3D digital scans from the Imaging and Medical Beamline guided the physical preparation of the crocodile, which was impossible without knowing precisely where the bones were,” Bevitt said, before adding: “The results were outstanding in providing an entire picture of the crocodile and its last meal, a partially digested juvenile dinosaur.”
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To confirm the dinosaur was, indeed, in the crocodile’s gut, the team observed ‘infilled worm tunnels, plant roots and geological features that extended between rock fragments’.
Bevitt said: “The chemistry of rock provided the evidence."
The team believe it is likely the crocodile had been caught in a ‘megaflood event’, was buried and died suddenly.
The specimens are now on display at the Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum, Winton.