The discovery of the teleosauroid crocodylomorph brought surprising news not only with respect to where it was discovered geographically, but also in relation to the time frame in which the animal inhabited the earth.
Most laypersons would immediately extract the crocodylo root of the above-referenced organism and envision a crocodile; however, the iteration of the animal today appears quite different from its lizard-like predecessor.
Upon discovery of fragments of the organism’s remains–which was found in the eastern extension of Morocco’s central Middle Atlas encased in a limestone base–scientists adjusted backwards the time in which it first appeared to the very earliest days of the Jurassic period. This places the creature as a contemporary of the dinosaurs.
As extraction would obviously have destroyed the integrity of the evidence, a three-dimensional model of the specimen–discussed in the Journal of African Earth Sciences, February 2023 edition–was made to reconstruct the finding, which it is now believed to represent the oldest thalattosuchian ever to have appeared on the African Continent.
This presumably cast doubt on the geographic origin of the species, as the vast majority of fossils in this category had previously been found in Europe.