{"id":8847,"date":"2022-05-13T15:16:16","date_gmt":"2022-05-13T05:16:16","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/?p=8847"},"modified":"2022-05-13T15:16:16","modified_gmt":"2022-05-13T05:16:16","slug":"crocodile-eats-dinosaur","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/nature\/animals\/crocodile-eats-dinosaur\/","title":{"rendered":"Crocodile eats dinosaur!"},"content":{"rendered":"

\"AGE<\/p>\n

Neutron imaging of delicate fossils reveals what an ancient crocodile had for dinner.<\/em><\/p>\n

The Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum has announced the discovery of Confractosuchus sauroktonos<\/em>, a new genus and species of ancient crocodile, found on the Winton sheep station in Queensland where major fossil finds led to the museum\u2019s foundation in 2002.<\/p>\n

The fossilised crocodile was too fragile for the surrounding rock to be removed conventionally, so the fossil was placed in the care of Dr Joseph Bevitt, a Senior Instrument Scientist at ANSTO. He used the neutron imaging station at Lucas Heights in NSW Australia for non-destructive X-ray micro-CT scanning technologies, identifying where the bones were located.<\/p>\n

Still more excitement came with the discovery of tiny dinosaur bones in the crocodile\u2019s gut \u2013 the first time in the world a crocodile has been discovered with dinosaur remains in its stomach.<\/p>\n

\u201cWe had discovered a dinosaur using neutrons for the first time!\u201d enthuses Dr Bevitt.<\/p>\n

An exact classification hasn\u2019t been possible from the remains, but it is thought to be a juvenile ornithopod dinosaur weighing up to 1.7kg, with indications that the Confractosuchus<\/em> either directly killed it or scavenged it quickly after its death, some 95 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous Period.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Neutron imaging of delicate fossils reveals what an ancient crocodile had for dinner. The Australian Age of Dinosaurs Museum has announced the discovery of Confractosuchus sauroktonos, a new genus and species of ancient…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":15,"featured_media":8848,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[7,86,69,49],"tags":[945,944],"class_list":["post-8847","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-animals","category-archaeology-2","category-archaeology","category-palaeontology","tag-dinosaur","tag-paleontology"],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8847"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/15"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=8847"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8847\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":8849,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/8847\/revisions\/8849"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/8848"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=8847"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=8847"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/scienceillustrated.com.au\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=8847"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}