''Crocodylus anthropophagus'' is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriat ...

crocodile Crocodiles (family Crocodylidae) or true crocodiles are large semiaquatic reptiles that live throughout the tropics in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australia. The term crocodile is sometimes used even more loosely to include all extant me ...

from the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...

Tanzania Tanzania (; ), officially the United Republic of Tanzania ( sw, Jamhuri ya Muungano wa Tanzania), is a country in East Africa within the African Great Lakes region. It borders Uganda to the north; Kenya to the northeast; Comoro Islands ...

. It lived 1.84 million years ago. It was a large-sized

predator Predation is a biological interaction where one organism, the predator, kills and eats another organism, its prey. It is one of a family of common feeding behaviours that includes parasitism and micropredation (which usually do not kill t ...

reaching a length of .

Etymology

''Crocodylus anthropophagus'' was first named by Christopher A. Brochu, Jackson Njau, Robert J. Blumenschine and Llewellyn D. Densmore in

2010 File:2010 Events Collage New.png, From top left, clockwise: The 2010 Chile earthquake was one of the strongest recorded in history; The Eruption of Eyjafjallajökull in Iceland disrupts air travel in Europe; A scene from the opening ceremony of ...

. The specific name ''anthropophagus'' is from Greek word "''anthropos''" that means "human" and Greek word "'" that means "eater", in reference to the evidence that this animal included hominids in its diet.

Taxonomy

The

holotype specimen A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of sever ...

, NNHM-1001, comprises a skull and partial skeleton. All specimens were discovered in

Olduvai Gorge The Olduvai Gorge or Oldupai Gorge in Tanzania is one of the most important paleoanthropological localities in the world; the many sites exposed by the gorge have proven invaluable in furthering understanding of early human evolution. A steep-si ...

, Tanzania, in two different rock formations dating to 1.845 and 1.839 million years ago in the

Plio-Pleistocene The Plio-Pleistocene is an informally described geological pseudo-period, which begins about 5 million years ago (Mya) and, drawing forward, combines the time ranges of the formally defined Pliocene and Pleistocene epochs—marking from about 5&n ...

. The cladogram below is from a 2021 study based on the finding of a new ''C. anthropophagus'' partial

cranium The skull is a bone protective cavity for the brain. The skull is composed of four types of bone i.e., cranial bones, facial bones, ear ossicles and hyoid bone. However two parts are more prominent: the cranium and the mandible. In humans, th ...

Description

The skeleton is consistent with living representatives of the genus. The axis vertebra has a projection on the underside (a hypapophysis) which seems to have largely fused to the vertebra itself. The vertebrae are procoelous in shape, with a spherical projection extending from the back side which attaches to a concave socket on the front end of the preceding vertebra. The femora slightly bend in an S-shape. However, ''C. anthropophagus'' lacks the shallow bony pair of crests running from the eyes to the nose like in Indopacific ''Crocodylus'', and lacks a boss (a lump of bone) on the middle of the snout like in Neotropical ''Crocodylus''. The right

premaxilla The premaxilla (or praemaxilla) is one of a pair of small cranial bones at the very tip of the upper jaw of many animals, usually, but not always, bearing teeth. In humans, they are fused with the maxilla. The "premaxilla" of therian mammal has ...

(the bone that makes up the front end of the snout) of the holotype preserved three

tooth sockets Dental alveoli (singular ''alveolus'') are sockets in the jaws in which the roots of teeth are held in the alveolar process with the periodontal ligament. The lay term for dental alveoli is tooth sockets. A joint that connects the roots of the t ...

, with a notable gap in between the first and second sockets. Another specimen's left

maxilla The maxilla (plural: ''maxillae'' ) in vertebrates is the upper fixed (not fixed in Neopterygii) bone of the jaw formed from the fusion of two maxillary bones. In humans, the upper jaw includes the hard palate in the front of the mouth. T ...

(the bone that makes up the back end of the snout) preserved 13 circular sockets, though it may have partially preserved a 14th. There was a gap between the 9th and 10th. The teeth were all conical and lacked serrations. It had two prominent, triangular “horns” over the ears.

Paleoecology

''Crocodylus anthropophagus'' was the largest predator encountered by human ancestors at

, as indicated by

hominin The Hominini form a taxonomic tribe of the subfamily Homininae ("hominines"). Hominini includes the extant genera ''Homo'' (humans) and '' Pan'' (chimpanzees and bonobos) and in standard usage excludes the genus ''Gorilla'' (gorillas). The ...

specimens preserving crocodile bite marks from these sites. Its type locality is near those for '' Homo habilis'' and '' Paranthropus boisei''.

References

This article incorporates CC-BY-2.5 text from the reference.

External links

Ancient Human Ancestors Faced Fearsome Horned Crocodile
LiveScience {{Taxonbar, from=Q1932167 Crocodylidae Reptiles described in 2010 Fossil taxa described in 2010 Pleistocene crocodylomorphs Pliocene crocodylomorphs Pleistocene reptiles of Africa Pliocene reptiles