You would be hard-pressed to find a crocodile living in Chatham County these days, but during the Triassic period, the Carolina butcher, a ten-foot long crocodylomorph, roamed the county.
The discovery of Carnufex carolinesis (the Carolina butcher), a crocodile from the Triassic period, was announced Mar. 19 in the journal Scientific Reports (from the publishers of Nature) in a paper by paleontologist Lindsay Zanno. The specimen was found by museum curator Vincent Schneider, and the bones were analyzed by Zanno. Zanno is a research professor at N.C. State and works in the paleontology lab at the North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences. She was assisted by Susan Drymala, a graduate student at N.C. State.
“We know that Carnufex had a long, slender skull, with a lot of very thin bones and ornamentation–pits, grooves, and bumps–and some very sharp teeth,” Drymala said. “We also know that Carnufex had a fairly short arm. Because of this, and based on what we know of its close relatives, we think that it is possible that Carnufex walked on its hind legs. It probably would have looked a much more like a dinosaur, rather than a crocodile.”
The bones were culled from the Pekin formation, which is in the Boren Clay Product pits. They are near Sanford around US 421, according to the Carolina Geological Society, about 30 minutes south of Pittsboro. The Chatham County of today bears little resemblance to Carnufex’s Chatham.
“Chatham County was very close to the equator during the Triassic period and was situated near the center of the supercontinent Pangea,” Drymala said. “The climate would have been hot, but seasonal between periods of drought and monsoon. Eastern Chatham County, where Carnufex comes from, was a rift valley, whereas the surrounding parts were probably hilly highlands.”
The find is significant because it supports the idea that there were an unusual number of predators in the Triassic period. Carnufex is also significant because it is one of the earliest known crocodylomorphs in the world. The discovery of Carnufex also has significance to Drymala as a scientist.
“I became a scientist because I wanted to discover new things,” Drymala said. “I’m an explorer at heart and paleontology is such a great science because you get to travel to all sorts of places and go millions of years back in time. Finding a new species is an incredible experience because you get to look at an animal that no other person has ever seen and you get to show that animal to the world.”
– By Frances Beroset