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| Credit: http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2011/09/14/nile-crocodile-is-actually-two-species-and-the-egyptians-knew-it/ |
I grow up loving crocodilians. Growing up I learned there where 23 species of Crocodilians. That's why this discovery is so exciting to me. In 2011 it was announced that the Nile Crocodile (Crocodylus niloticus) was in fact two different species. They are the Nile Crocodile as we traditionally think of them. The Nile Crocodile is often assumed to be the second largest crocodile species of the planet growing up to 18 feet and perhaps weighting nearly 1 ton.
However this study discovered a population of crocodile living in west Africa. The researchers named this species the West African crocodile (Crocodylus suchus). Its believed that this West African Crocodile to quite different from the Nile crocodile, who the study says shares a lot of his genetic information with new world crocodiles rather than this fellow African Crocodile.
Sources
http://reptile-database.reptarium.cz/species?genus=Crocodylus&species=suchus
http://www.nature.com/news/2011/110914/full/news.2011.535.html
http://news.nationalgeographic.com/news/2002/06/0617_020618_croc.html
http://phenomena.nationalgeographic.com/2011/09/14/nile-crocodile-is-actually-two-species-and-the-egyptians-knew-it/
