Part-time paleontologist discovers crocodile remains

A Manitoba lawyer who moonlights as a part-time paleontologist has discovered the fossilized remains of a crocodile estimated to be about 100 million years old.

Chris Tait was searching for fossil fish along the banks of a river near Dauphin, when he noticed something slightly larger.

"I thought at first it was perhaps a plesiosaur, which was a large reptile — something like the Loch Ness Monster-type of animal," Tait said. "Once I dug down to it I found it was something very different. I didn't know exactly what it was but it in the end turned out to be a crocodile."

The find is significant because it is believed to be even older than crocodile remains found in Saskatchewan a few years ago.

"The animal itself was probably about 20 feet long when it was alive. There isn't a head as part of the fossil or anything, but there's enough bones there to determine certainly that it was a crocodile," Tait said.

It is believed the prehistoric specimen may be a Terminonaris robusta, a long-snouted crocodile relative from the late Cretaceous period, though Tait has yet to have that confirmed.

He said most of the Prairies were under the ocean at the time the Terminonaris robusta lived, but the area around Dauphin may have been an island, since crocodiles stayed close to the shore.