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b'Sign up for our mailing list! We also have t-shirts and mugs with our logo!\\n\\nThanks to Pranav and Max for their suggestions. Let\'s learn about some mystery crocodiles (and crocodile mysteries) this week!\\n\\nFurther reading:\\n\\nHuge prehistoric croc \'river boss\' prowled waterways\\n\\nExtinct "horned" crocodile\'s ancestry revealed\\n\\nNew species of crocodile discovered in museum collections\\n\\nRediscovery of "Lost" Caiman Leads to New Crocodilian Mystery\\n\\nThe Orange Cave-Dwelling Crocodiles\\n\\nThe horned crocodile\'s fossil skull:\\n\\n\\n\\nA baby Apaporis River caiman, looking fierce but cute (picture from link above):\\n\\n\\n\\nAn orange crocodile (later released, picture from link above):\\n\\n\\n\\nShow transcript:\\nWelcome to Strange Animals Podcast. I\\u2019m your host, Kate Shaw. We\\u2019ve got a crocodile episode this week you can really sink your teeth into. Thanks to Pranav and Max for their suggestions! (Yes, I do have a cold but hopefully I don\\u2019t sound too bad. I got a covid test today to make sure it\\u2019s just a cold, and it\\u2019s just a cold.)\\nWe talked about crododilians in episode 85, so if you want to learn more about the saltwater crocodile or how to tell the American crocodile from the American alligator and so forth, that\\u2019s the episode to listen to. This episode is going to talk about mystery crocodiles!\\nThe partial skull of a massive extinct crocodilian discovered in Queensland, Australia over a century ago was finally described in June of 2021. All we have is the partial skull from an animal that lived between 2 and 5 million years ago, but researchers can estimate the size of the whole animal by comparing the dimensions of its skull with its closest living relation. That happens to be an animal called the false gharial that lives on a few islands in South Asia, including Java and Sumatra. It\\u2019s the only living member of the subfamily Tomistominae, which used to be common worldwide. The false gharial can grow as long as 16 feet, or 5 meters, but its extinct Australian cousin was much bigger. The new species, Gunggamarandu maunala, may have grown up to 23 feet long, or 7 meters.\\nA smaller extinct crocodile, called the horned crocodile, lived in Madagascar until only about 1,400 years ago. It grew a little over 16 feet long, or 5 meters. It had two projections at the back of its head that look like horns, although they weren\\u2019t actually horns and probably weren\\u2019t all that big or noticeable when the crocodile was alive.\\nLike Gunggamarandu, the horned crocodile\\u2019s fossils were discovered almost 150 years ago but only definitively described in 2021. In this case, though, the delay was because no one could decide where the horned crocodile belonged in the crocodilian family tree. The Nile crocodile lives on Madagascar now, and some researchers assumed that the horned crocodile was either a close relation of the Nile croc or its ancestor. Since new evidence points to the Nile crocodile being a fairly recent arrival to the island, that\\u2019s not likely, so researchers analyzed the fossil remains and reclassified the horned croc as a member of the dwarf crocodiles in 2007. Finally, though, a research team analyzed the horned croc\\u2019s DNA and determined that it belongs in its own genus and is most closely related to the ancestral species of all living crocodiles. This suggests that crocodiles evolved in Africa and spread throughout the world from there.\\nResearchers aren\\u2019t sure what caused the horned croc to go extinct, but it may have been a combination of factors, including a drying climate on Madagascar, the arrival of humans, and the arrival of the Nile crocodile.\\nSpeaking of the Nile crocodile and DNA, a 2011 genetic study of the Nile crocodile resulted in a surprising discovery. The study tested not just DNA samples gathered from 123 living Nile crocodiles but from 57 crocodiles mummified in ancient Egypt. The goal was to see if there were differences between modern crocodiles and ones that lived several thousand years ago,'