30- FOOT CROCODILES ONCE ROAMED PLANET.

• Position: Brief Article

Imagine a crocodile that is more than 30 feet long and weighs about 10,000 pounds. Such a creature actually existed 80,000,000 years ago, when dinosaurs still ruled the Earth. The giant crocs, dubbed Deinosuchus, or terror crocodile, needed their large stature to compete with the dinosaurs.

Paleontologists Gregory Erickson, a postdoctoral fellow in mechanical engineering at Stanford (Calif.) University, and Christopher A. Brochu of the Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, III., studied the annual growth layers in the fossilized bony armor plates called scutes from two terror crocs unearthed in Texas and Montana. Comparing them with the scutes of existing crocodilians, the researchers found that the Deinosuchus grew a foot a year, about the same as modern crocodiles, but continued to grow, taking about 35 to 40 years to reach adult size. By comparison, today's crocodiles seldom live beyond the age of 30 in the wild.

In addition to scutes, the researchers examined jaws...