SuperCroc coming to museum

The Norman Transcript

May 22, 2008 12:22 am

— For the Transcript
"The Science of SuperCroc, featuring Nigersaurus," a special exhibition produced by Project Exploration that showcases two specimens found by National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Paul Sereno, will open May 31 at the Sam Noble Oklahoma Museum of Natural History.
The exhibit will open the same day as the new permanent Paleozoic gallery.
SuperCroc is the nickname given to Sarcosuchus imperator, a 40-foot-long crocodile that lived in what is now the Sahara desert about 110 million years ago.
This prehistoric giant sported more than 100 spiked teeth in its 6-foot-long skull, and was likely capable of eating small dinosaurs by ambushing them from below at the river's edge, much the same way modern crocs do.
SuperCroc was one of the largest crocodiles ever to walk the earth and weighed an estimated 17,000 pounds in life.
Project Exploration has added a bonus to the SuperCroc exhibit, especially for this venue.
Nigersaurus taqueti was a dinosaur known, until recently, only from a few scattered bones found in Africa. Sereno has collected and assembled bones of many specimens to create, for the first time, a reconstruction of what the strange Mesozoic dinosaur would have looked like.
The reconstructed Nigersaurus was a 30-foot-long sauropod with a body about the size of an elephant's. Unlike more well-known sauropods such as the Apatosaurus -- whose long neck stretched upward to allow the dinosaur to browse on trees -- Nigersaurus was equipped with a low-slung, 6-foot-long neck and a very broad, blunt snout that faced downward and was filled with teeth designed for snipping off plants close to the ground.
"SuperCroc Featuring Nigersaurus" will be on view at the museum through Aug. 24.