Croc! Old Aussie crocs accessibility tourCroc! Old Aussie crocs accessibility tour 

Croc! Lost Giants to Living Legends, Old Aussie crocs audio description and transcript includes:

• Old Aussie crocs
• Prehistoric parade part 1

Part 2 includes:

• Prehistoric parade part 2
• What's in a name?

Part 3 includes:

• Tooth test
• Divine croc
• Skin bones

You are moving into a new section. A panel on the wall summarises this section with the following text:  

OLD AUSSIE CROCS

Ancient Australia was home to a group of crocodiles called the mekosuchines.

Though all related, they came in a variety of shapes and sizes and adapted to live in different habitats, not just in the water.  

We know them from fossils found in Queensland, the Northern Territory and South Australia.

Mekosuchines lived in Australia from 55 million years ago until only 40,000 years ago. We don’t know what drove them extinct, but it may have been the drying climate.

As the first people arrived here over 65,000 years ago, they probably met the mekos.  

 

A floor-to-ceiling illuminated mural spans an entire wall of this section.

Text on this mural gives context for the illustrations. It reads:

PREHISTORIC PARADE

Meet the crocs that used to live in Australia (and two that still do).

Not all ancient crocs lived in the water – many lived out on land.

These beautiful illustrations are life-sized, and arranged along a timeline to show when they were around.

They were created by palaeoartist Andrey Atuchin, with expertise from palaeontologists Dr Scott Hocknull and Dr Adam Yates.

DESCRIPTION OF DISPLAY:

The mural depicts ten different prehistoric species of crocodile in lifelike poses – some swimming, some on land. The bottom two-thirds of the mural depict some crocs in the weedy water of a river, and the top third of the mural shows the land-dwelling crocs in poses on rocks, or amongst ferns and other vegetation.

Along the very top of the mural, the following timeline is listed, from left to right: 100 million years, 50 million years, 15 million years, 5 million years, 50 thousand years, and 5 thousand years.

Moving along the mural, from left to right, each croc illustration is captioned as follows:

1. Isisfordia duncani, [who we met earlier in the exhibition], was a small crocodilian that lived in Queensland during the ‘Age of Dinosaurs’, 92–100 million years ago.  
2. Kambara murgonensis lived in south-east Queensland around 55 million years ago, near where [the town of] Murgon is today. Global temperatures were much hotter then, so crocodiles could live further south. It was a medium-sized aquatic predator that looked like a small saltwater croc, although it was related to the bizarre-looking Mekosuchus.
3. Harpacochampsa camfieldensis is a mysterious crocodilian, known only from a 14-million-year-old incomplete fossil skull found in the Northern Territory. It had a long, narrow snout, adapted to catch fish, and may have been a member of the gharial family.
4. Trilophosuchus rackhami was arguably the cutest of all Aussie crocs, a tiny member of the Australian mekosuchine family. It hunted insects, frogs and other small prey on the rainforest floor about 13 million years ago.
5. Quinkana fortirostrum was unlike any living crocodile today, with serrated steak-knife teeth and a tall skull. It likely lived most of its life on land. Its fossils come from caves in southern and central Queensland and are 500,000–200,000 years old. The Quinkana genus was named after the quinkan, a Gugu–Yalanji word for a mythical human-like spirit of Dreamtime.
6. Baru iylwenpeny was about the size of a large saltwater croc but was far more heavily built and muscular. It probably hunted megafauna in Australia’s inland waterways about 8 million years ago.
7. Mekosuchus inexpectatus fossils have been found in archaeological sites on the island of New Caledonia. These archaic-looking crocs were unlike any found today. Evidence suggests that people there hunted and ate them only 3,500–4,000 years ago. Other species of Mekosuchus lived in northern Queensland 10-20 million years ago.
8. Paludirex vincenti was a giant 6-metre-long mekosuchine that lived in Queensland about 3–4 million years ago. Its relatives survived up to 40,000 years ago, well after people arrived on the continent. It hunted large mammals and had an exceptionally broad snout.
9. Crocodylus johnstoni, the freshwater crocodile, is a long-snouted species that hunts small animals like frogs and fish. Only a few fossilised jaw fragments have been found, making it rare in the fossil record.  
10. Crocodylus porosus, the saltwater crocodile, has one of the youngest fossil records in Australia. When it arrived, it probably competed with the crocs already here, like Paludirex. Its ability to live along the coast and in marine environments protected it from events happening inland that drove other species extinct.

 

A text panel on a wall nearby reads:

WHAT’S IN A NAME?
These ancient crocs were named within a Western system. First Nations’ naming systems, while sharing similarities, are deeply rooted in spiritual and cultural beliefs and often incorporate kinship systems and rituals. 

 

A panel on the wall gives context to the display beside it. The panel reads:

TOOTH TEST

Most living crocs have pointy, cone-shaped teeth, good for snatching wriggling prey.

But teeth from some extinct crocs are flatter and serrated, like knife blades, perfect for slicing through prey.  

Studying croc teeth reveals some ancient species had different diets to crocs today. A few were even herbivores – veggie crocs.

Compare the teeth of the ancient croc and the current croc.

How are they similar?

How are they different?

Which is more like the dinosaur tooth?

 

DESCRIPTION OF DISPLAY:

Beside the text panel, mounted on the wall is a dinosaur tooth - a replica tooth from a Tyrannosaurus rex. This display can be touched. The replica conical-shaped tooth is about 10 cm long and 3-4 cm wide at the top, and slightly curving, tapering to a point at the bottom. The tooth is blackish-brown in colour.

Also mounted on the wall, next to the T-rex tooth, is a clear perspex box that houses two more teeth.

On the left is an ancient crocodile tooth - a real fossil tooth from a Quinkana. This tooth is about 4 cm long, and 2-3 cm wide at the top, and tapers straight down to a point. The tooth is a mottled dark and light-brown colour.

On the right is a saltie tooth – a real tooth from a living croc donated by Crocosaurus Cove in Darwin. This tooth is about 4 cm long and 2-3 cm wide at the top, and slightly curving, tapering to a point at the bottom. The conical-shaped tooth is pearly-white colour.

 

DESCRIPTION OF DISPLAY:

A 4-metre-long plinth displays a skeleton of a prehistoric crocodile behind a chest-high pane of glass. On the wall behind the skeleton a text panel gives context to the display. The panel reads:

DIVINE CROC

Meet Baru iylwenpeny. 
His name means ‘divine crocodile who is good at hunting’ in the Yolŋu Matha and Anmatyerr languages.

He lived in Australia about 8 million years ago.

Baru grew to about 4–5 metres long, like today’s saltwater crocs, but had a shorter, deeper snout and very large teeth – perfect for crunching megafauna, and leading to the nickname ‘cleaver-headed croc’.

This is a 3D-printed replica of a skeleton assembled from bones found at Alcoota Scientific Reserve, about 120 km north-east of Alice Springs.

Baru iylwenpeny was named by Dr Adam Yates of the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory.

 

DESCRIPTION OF DISPLAY:

Also on the plinth, towards the tail-end of the skeleton is a 1-metre-long glass box displaying five rectangular-shaped tile-like fossils, each with a distinct bump in the centre of the ‘tile’. The largest is about the size of an adult hand, and the smaller ones are about the size of a credit card. An object label beside the box gives context to the display. The label reads:

SKIN BONES

These bony plates are real fossils from Baru iylwenpeny. They are about 8 million years old. 

Called osteoderms, they formed the croc’s bumpy armour.

Baru would have had about 650 of them – he was well-protected. The large one formed part of a solid shield to cover his neck, while the others were tile-like plates over his back. 

They were found in the late 1990s to early 2000s on the Alcoota Scientific Reserve in central Australia.