Unlabeled fossils — a jawbone, some teeth and armored plates — have been identified as those of a 30-foot-long crocodile, the largest that ever lived in prehistoric New Mexico.
The fossils of the predator had been stored, unclassified, for six years among the 100,000 fossils at the New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science here.
"It just got sort of stuck in the collection, and nobody noticed it," said paleontology curator Spencer Lucas said.
The plump-looking armored plates intrigued Lucas, because crocodile plates typically are thin and flat. He investigated and determined its pedigree: the first deinosuchus from New Mexico.
"This is the biggest crocodile that ever lived in New Mexico," Lucas said. "Its contemporaries living at the same time were about half its size."
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This the the creature that was formerly phobosuchus. This expands the western colony of deinosuchus a lot.
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