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Origin story: America's crocodiles came out of Africa
Issued on: 23/07/2020 - 22:56
Modified: 23/07/2020 - 22:54
Artistic reconstruction by artist Dawid A. Iurino of Crocodylus checchiai, which lived more than five million years ago
Dawid A. IURINO Universita degli Studi di Perugia/AFP/File
3 min
Paris (AFP)
The several species of crocodiles plying rivers and brackish byways in the Americas -- from Florida to Peru -- all came from Africa, according to a study published Thursday.
They may have descended, researchers speculate, from a single pregnant specimen that bobbed along Atlantic Ocean currents to the New World at least five million years ago, probably longer.
Based on the high-tech analysis of a skull fragment unearthed from the Libyan desert in 1939, the findings are bolstered by genetic evidence pointing in the same direction, they reported in the journal Scientific Reports.
"This is a really exciting discovery," lead authors Massimo Delfino from the University of Turin and Dawid Iurino, a palaeontologist at Sapienza University in Rome, told AFP by email.
More:
https://www.france24.com/en/20200723-origin-story-america-s-crocodiles-came-out-of-africa
Also posted in Science:
https://www.democraticunderground.com/122870840
