'SuperCroc' skull arrives at Tyrrell museum
Last Updated: Thursday, February 19, 2009 | 1:14 PM ET
CBC News
The original SuperCroc skull was dug up nine years ago in Niger and is currently touring, said curator François Therrien. (CBC)Alberta's Royal Tyrrell Museum will be exhibiting a cast of a massive prehistoric crocodile skull this spring as part of an exhibit honouring Charles Darwin.
The skull is 1.7 metres long and belonged to a sarcosuchus, nicknamed SuperCroc, that would have been more than 10 metres long, about the same size as a Tyrannosaurus rex.
The original skull was dug up nine years ago in Niger and is currently touring, said curator François Therrien.
"The Tyrrell will be the only museum in Canada to have a cast of the skull of that giant crocodile and in the United States there is just a handful of museums that actually own a cast," he said. "We expect it's going to be a big deal."
The Drumheller-based museum purchased the cast to include in an exhibit on fossils marking the 150th anniversary of the publication of Charles Darwin's The Origin of Species.
"It shows, actually, that there are several times during Earth's history when crocodiles got extremely big 110 million years ago," Therrien said. "But only 67 or 70 million ago here in North America we also had giant crocodiles the same size of T-Rex. So it shows that through evolution you have similar body shapes that evolved independently on different continents and from different animals."
Share Tools
Top News Headlines
- Tories move to curb 'bogus' refugees
- The Conservative government is poised to change the refugee system yet again in an attempt to deter what it considers "bogus" claimants, CBC News has learned. more »
- Children of immigrants challenged at school, home
- By 2016, foreign-born youth and Canadian-born youth from immigrant families will make up a quarter of the country's population, according to predictions by the Canadian Council on Social Development. As their numbers grow, more attention is being paid to their successes and failures. more »
- 2 NDP MPs back final Commons vote to kill gun registry
- Two NDP MPs broke party ranks to vote with the government in the final House of Commons vote on scrapping the long-gun registry. more »
- B.C. house party trial hears from tearful teens
- Two teenagers cried as they testified at the trial of a B.C. woman who was charged after a teen died while her son was hosting a party at her house in 2008. more »
Latest Technology & Science News Headlines
- Online surveillance bill may breach privacy law, charter
- A new bill that would require telecommunications providers to give police subscriber information without a warrant will likely be challenged in the courts if crucial changes aren't made, critics say. more »
- Canada's air pollution experts moved to 'other priorities'
- Environment Canada has drastically cut back on its monitoring of air pollution that can cause health problems for Canadians, reassigning scientists involved in that monitoring to "other priorities." more »
- Online privacy erosion dismays critics
- Government and law enforcement access to people's electronic communications is the norm in dictatorships around the world, but the same intrusion appears to be creeping into North America, say opponents of a new online surveillance bill tabled in the House Tuesday. more »
- Venus slowdown puzzles planetary scientists
- Scientists have detected a sudden and dramatic slowdown in the rotation of Earth's sister planet Venus. more »
Bob McDonald's Blog
Glacier Discovery Walk: Will the visitor centre enhance the view? Feb. 14, 2012 9:22 AM Environment minister Peter Kent has announced the construction of a new Glacier Discovery Walk and visitor centre on the Icefields Parkway in Jasper National Park. It raises the issue of how to balance commercial development in our National Parks against the preservation of the last refuges of wilderness.
Quirks & Quarks
- February 18: Guitar Hero, or Guitar Zero? Feb. 15, 2012 10:53 AM An NYU professor of psychology describes how he was able to learn to play the guitar in midlife in spite of a limited musical aptitude, and what it tells us about how our brains learn.
Latest Features
- Drummond report on Ontario calls for cutbacks
- Barefoot girl's icy trek not blamed on babysitter
- 2 NDP MPs back final Commons vote to kill gun registry
- Immigrants the proudest Canadians, poll suggests
- Honduras prison fire kills hundreds
- Bodyguard hired for bully victim in Fredericton
- Canadian housing market cools in January
- Legalize pot, say former B.C. attorneys general
- Russians' abusive plane tirade to cost them $19K
