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New Species Of 10-Foot Crocodile Found Lurking In

New Guinea

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THE NEW SPECIES IN ALL ITS TOOTHY GLORY. © AMERICAN SOCIETY OF ICHTHYOLOGISTS AND HERPETOLOGISTS

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It’s not often you find a new species of 3-meter (10-foot) crocodile hiding in
plain sight. But that’s exactly what happened to two zoologists after one
species of croc that lives in New Guinea turned out to be two.

New Guinea, a vast island to the north of Australia, has long been home to a By Rachel Baxter
large species of freshwater crocodile known as Crocodylus novaeguineae, first 26 SEP 2019, 19:18
described in 1928. However, for some time scientists have suspected the
species is not quite what it seems. Inspired by the work of the late scientist
Philip Hall, who noticed strange differences in the nesting and mating behavior of the species,
researchers Chris Murray and Caleb McMahan set out to investigate. They reported their findings in the
journal Copeia.

They analyzed 51 skulls kept in various museums to try to spot any differences between crocs found in
the northern parts of the island and those found in the south. The two groups are divided by the New
Guinea Highlands, a long chain of mountain ranges and river valleys. The duo noticed physical differences
between the skulls and so headed to Florida’s St Augustine Alligator Farm Zoological Park to see if the
same differences could be seen in living crocodilians.

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A skull belonging to the newly described species. © American Society of Ichthyologists and Herpetologists

"They have live individuals of what's called novaeguineae, and we were able to look at those and say, 'Oh
yeah, this matches the north and this matches the south!' I thought that was super cool," said McMahan,
who’s an assistant professor at Southeastern Louisiana University, in a statement.

"We could even look at a skull that they had there and tell what river it came from. So our analyses really
did a good job at teasing apart where these things are from," added Murray, a scientist at the Field
Museum in Chicago.

Crocodiles from the north and south differ in their bone morphology. For example, northern crocs have
longer jaw and nose bones than their southern counterparts. And they behave differently too. Southern
females nest in the rainy season and produce fewer eggs than northern crocs, which nest in the dry
season.

From their analyses and observations of living animals, the team concluded the two groups are different
enough to be officially classed as separate species. They named the southern species Crocodylus halli in
memory of Philip Hall, whose ideas led to their study.

McMahan examines croc skulls at the Field Museum. Kate Golembiewski, Field Museum

"The nice thing is that here we've got differences in the morphology, we've got ecological differences,
they're separated by a mountain range, I think the synthesis of all of that is what really builds the case
that these two crocodile entities are very different from each other," explained McMahan.

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The researchers note that being aware that there are two species of croc on the island is important for
conservation. Separated geographically, the two species inhabit slightly different environments, so if a
particular habitat is threatened, that could spell disaster for one species but not the other.

"It could be that when we consider crocs on the whole island, they might be okay, but if we start looking
at a species north of the highlands and one south of the highlands you might find more habitat
degradation and population threats in one over the other,” McMahan said.

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