Sprinting Crocs With ‘Legs Like Greyhounds’ Once Ruled the Caribbean

Over the past three decades, paleontologists have been uncovering sharp, serrated, prehistoric teeth on Caribbean islands. The strange part? According to scientists, the owners of such teeth—large land predators—were never supposed to exist there. But an international team of researchers has found that millions of years ago, a freakishly tall crocodile-like land predator called a sebecid roamed the Caribbean—surviving there until about five million years ago, long after its South American relatives died out around 11 million years ago. The findings bolster the theory that land bridges or a chain of islands once connected the Caribbean to South America. In 2023, researchers found another fossilized tooth in the Dominican Republic, this time with two vertebrae, allowing them to finally identify the remains as belonging to sebecids. As detailed in a study published Wednesday in Proceedings of the Royal Society B, experts dated the fossils to between 7.14 and 4.57 million years ago—more ... Read full article.