By NOEL MURPHY
WHOA! What a croc!
Meet Sarcosuchus imperator, the prehistoric king of crocodiles.
At 11 metres long, 9000kg and with jaws like an industrial-sized lacerating guillotine, he’s the world’s biggest ever crocodile.
‘SuperCroc’ might be 110 million years old but he’s taken up residency at Geelong’s National Wool Museum for the next couple of months – all steel-frame supported scales and fibreglass, gleaming evil eyes and wicked-looking teeth.
And hungrily regarding his dinosaur exhibition mates, by the looks of him.
SuperCroc has come to Geelong courtesy of Sydney’s Australian Museum and National Geographic Channel. His exhibition mates, bizarre polar dinosaurs from Victoria’s southwest, arrived via Monash University.
The SuperCroc model on show is based on a 1.5-metre giant Sarcosuchus skull found in the Sahara Desert.
A cast of the skull and its jaws studded with more than 100 teeth is also on show thanks to a loan from Northern Territory’s Museum and Art Gallery .
The ferocious SperCroc ate tropical dinosaurs for breakfast with his bone-crushing incisors.
An odd-looking bulge in his snout housed a cavity that scientists believe gave SuperCros a super sense of smell and an unusual call, making him a deadly and terrifying adversary to his hapless victims.
His upwards-tilted eye sockets, almost like eyeballs on stalks, allowed him to conceal his bus-sized body underwater while scrutinising the landscape for prey.
The SuperCroc and Polar Dinos exhibition includes all manner of bones, skulls – including fiercesome tyrannosaurs – artist impressions, field notes, models, fossils, photographs and information panels.
The exhibition opens tonight and runs until mid-November.
