Sea Monsters of Patagonia.

• Author: Coyner, Kelley
• Position: Discovery of crocodile's fossil called "Godzilla"

It does not look like beach-front property, but that is what it was--140 million years ago. Bordering a bay on the far western edge of the Pacific Ocean, it once swarmed with prehistoric sea life. At the time, this land was part of Gondwana, a mega continent that united what we now know as South America, Antarctica, Africa, Australia, and India.

Today the view is far from oceanic. The vista is dry, rocky, semidesert, agrarian, isolated, and uninhabited. Located in the far northwestern corner of Neuquen Province in the Argentine Patagonia, fifty miles from the nearest village of Chos Malal, the area surrounding what is called the Pampa Tril site is better known today for goats, sheep, and cattle and their Mapuche herdsmen than for marine life or fantastic sea monsters. However, that's about to change. Since the late 1980s, paleontologists have been chiseling away at the erstwhile basin's rocky outeroppings. In the future, this dusty site may become famous for Dakosaurus andiniensis--Godzilla for short--a huge marine crocodile that swam in the basin looking for huge Jurassic prey to attack with its meat cleaver of a jaw.

Beginning in 1972, investigators in the Mesozoic Mature Reptile Project, headquartered at the La Plata Museum, have been excavating and finding numerous marine fossils in Latin America. (Both the museum and the National University of La Plata, of which it is a part, have played an important role in the education of many of the region's paleontologists and technicians.) At Pampa Tril alone, researchers found fragments, some largely intact, of marine tortoises, ichthyoand pliosaurs, saurs. Then ten years ago, brothers Sergio and Rafael Cocca came across a distinctive nodule, or chunk of rock, and moved it to the Olsacher Museum, in Zapala, where they both are technicians, seventy-five miles away. They knew that they had found something special; they did not know how rare.

A call to Dr. Zuhna Gasparini, head of the Mesozoic Marine Reptile Project, and of the National Geographic expedition at Pampa Tril that sprained file nineties, brought her to see the specimen firsthand. "What surprised me was the presence of huge teeth with serrated edges," remembers Gasparini. Modemday crocodiles have numerous smaller teeth that are suited to eating plants and mollusks. The Cocca brothers returned to the site and found several large vertebrae in the same area. Based on these discoveries, Gasparini decided to send everything to the La Plata Museum's Department of Paleontological Vertebrates. She felt certain the rock held something special.

Technicians working with chisels and hand-held pneumatic tools toiled slowly and carefully to remove the rock. After three years, their efforts revealed a giant crocodile-like head with a skull about three feet long. "When I saw it, I was convinced we had found a rare marine crocodile," says Gasparini. "I gave it the nickname of Godzilla because it reminded me of a dinosaur, only one that came from the sea," she explains.

The nickname hints at the "weirdness of this creature," says Diego Pol, a researcher at the Egidio Feruglio Paleontological Museum in Trelew, Chubut. It resembles both a modern-day crocodile and a terrestrial carnivorous dinosaur.

Though resemblance to a dinosaur is apparent, "there is no 'real' debate; everybody [so far] has agreed that it is a crocodile," says Pol. Scientists have not previously seen a dinosaur with the features of a crocodile--in this case, with a raised face, short snout, and sharp, serrated, interlocking teeth. Pol has called Godzilla "one of the most evolved members of the crocodilian family and one of the most bizarre." He should know. His job was to determine where Godzilla fits on the evolutionary tree. Pol is the man behind...