• H2020
• Global Collaboration

In 2014, a team of Italian and Tunisian scientists discovered marine crocodile fossils in rocks identified as being around 130 million years old. Found roughly 30 miles south of the city of Tataouine in southern Tunisia, the reptile has been named Machimosaurus rex and is believed to have a body length of up to 35 feet – larger than any known crocodiles from the same period.

Federico Fanti, assistant professor at the University of Bologna, said: “We have been digging in that area since 2011 because the rocks there are nothing like in other places. Globally, good fossils are rare from this age.”

The team also included scientists from the University of Alberta in Edmonton, Canada, who have said how touched they were by the hospitality of the Tunisian people, particularly when one considers the political unrest that the country – a recent addition to the Horizon 2020 Framework Project – has been beset with over the past few years.

“Nothing,” said University of Alberta scientist Tetsuto Miyashita, “could make me happier than us working together again to get to that big monster”.

This “big monster” is also believed to have been able to crush the shells and bones of other prehistoric marine animals with its bullet-sized teeth.

The latest study on Machimosaurus rex has been published in the journal Cretaceous Research.