Scientists have unearthed Australia's oldest known crocodile eggshells which may have belonged to drop crocs - creatures that climbed trees to hunt prey below.
The discovery of the 55-million-year-old eggshells was made in a sheep farmer's backyard in Queensland with the findings published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
The eggshells belonged to a long-extinct group of crocodiles known as mekosuchines, who lived in inland waters when Australia was part of Antarctica and South America.
Co-author Prof Michael Archer said drop crocs were a bizarre idea but some were perhaps hunting like leopards - dropping out of trees on any unsuspecting thing they fancied for dinner.
Prof Archer, a palaeontologist at the University of New South Wales, noted that mekosuchine crocodiles, which could grow to about five meters, were plentiful 55 million years ago, long before their modern saltwater and freshwater cousins arrived in Australia about 3.8 million years ago.
The drop croc eggshells were discovered several decades ago but only recently analyzed with the help of scientists in Spain. Prof Archer described them as terrestrial hunters in the forests.
Since the early 1980s, Prof Archer has been part of a team excavating a clay pit in Murgon, a small town about 270km north-west of Brisbane, known as one of Australia's oldest fossil sites.
Dr Michael Stein, a co-author of the report, elaborated on the ancient ecosystem that included the world's oldest-known songbirds, early frogs and snakes, small mammals with South American links, and some of the oldest bats.
Reflecting on their early work, Prof Archer recounted how he and a colleague approached a local farmer to seek permission to excavate, highlighting the prehistoric treasures that might lie beneath the soil.
Through ongoing excavations, scientists believe that many more discoveries await in this rich site, continuing to reveal the wonders of prehistoric life.
