125 Million Year Old Skin: Montsecosuchus

Publication Info:

Transcript:

Oscar Castillo-Visa et al, Soft tissue preservation in the Barremian Montsecosuchus depereti (Neosuchia: Atoposauridae), Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society (2026). DOI: 10.1093/zoolinnean/zlag076

Meet the perfectly preserved fossil of Montsecosuchus, that's allowing paleontologists to see what some ancient crocodylomorphs looked like! Cartilage, scales, skin, even sensory organs can't hide from the newest imaging techniques!

Episode 296

Notes:

Paleontologists just discovered the skin pattern on a 125 million-year-old crocodile relative. Here's your most recent paleontology news almost daily or whenever I get around to it. So, even though all modern crocs and gators kind of look relatively similar, Crocodylomorpha is the group that includes all of them and all of their ancient relatives, some of which got pretty weird. Because the fossil crocodylomorph ancestors and relatives of modern gators filled just about every niche you can imagine. And it's always fun to talk about the weird crocodylomorphs doing really weird things by today's standards, but to be fair, not all of them were that different. This is Montsecosuchus from early Cretaceous Catalonia. And yeah, it looks pretty gatory. Longer legs, smaller head, but if you saw one in the wild, you'd probably just think it was a small weird gator. But that doesn't change the fact that it's a 125 million-year-old crocodylomorph and it is known from this ridiculously well-preserved fossil. And paleontologists were just able to learn a whole lot more about it using advanced imaging techniques. And not only the skin patterns, but also things you wouldn't necessarily expect to preserve, like cartilage around the ribs, indicating that this crocodylomorph had a respiratory system potentially fairly similar to the highly efficient system in modern crocs and gators. And had sensory organs in its skin on the limbs, neck, and down the body very similar to the less isolated organs that modern crocs and gators used to sense the world around them, especially in the water. And the skin patterns even that far back looked a whole lot like an American alligator, having variable scale shapes and sizes and a striped pattern back toward its tail. Now, paleontologists couldn't tell the exact colors, but they could tell that there were light and dark stripes. So yeah, the skin patterns and structure, at least in hindsight, aren't super surprising, but it is wild that there's finally evidence for it. As usual, if you want more information, here's the source.