New crocodile species found in rocks used to build Egypt’s Great Sphinx

Long before the Great Sphinx became one of Egypt’s most recognisable monuments, the landscape around Cairo was home to a very different kind of long-snouted creature. Now, a fossil discovered from the same ancient rocks used to construct the Sphinx has revealed a new species of extinct crocodile and it comes with an extraordinary coincidence. The fossil is missing the tip of its snout, creating an uncanny parallel with the monument’s famously absent nose. The species, named Herugavialis cairensis, has been identified through a fresh examination of fossils recovered nearly a century ago. The findings, published in Royal Society Open Science, offer a glimpse into a time when crocodiles thrived in the ancient Mediterranean.A crocodile lost to timeAccording to a report published by Phys Org, the fossils were originally recovered during the 1920s from Egypt’s roughly 45-million-year-old Mokattam Formation.