THAT ROCKS

Scientists Make Jaw-Dropping Discovery in Rock Used to Build Sphinx

Scans of a 50-million-year-old fossil extracted from the limestone used to build the Sphinx revealed a totally new species.

Scientists analyzing an ancient fossil embedded in the same limestone used to build the Sphinx of Giza have made a staggering discovery.

The international research team examined the 50-million-year-old specimen, originally unearthed in Cairo’s Mokattam hills, using advanced CT scanning to evaluate over 300 distinct skull measurements. The Washington Post reported the find on Wednesday.

The team’s findings, published in the journal Royal Society Open Science, proved the long-misidentified creature is a unique evolutionary relative of modern false gharials, or in other words, a brand-new prehistoric crocodile species.

The fossil was dug up roughly a century ago and filed in the historical record under Tomistoma, the genus of the false gharial, a slender-jawed croc, the Post reported. Now, the false gharial is found only in the freshwater rivers and swamps of Malaysia and Indonesia. This created a puzzling anomaly, placing the Egyptian specimen’s supposed closest kin roughly 5,000 miles away.

“This fossil has been flagged as being problematic because it was given the same genus name as one of the extant species,” lead researcher Paul Burke explained, noting that past assessments relied on subjective morphology.

Burke is a postdoctoral fellow in paleontology at the Swedish Museum of Natural History. He spent his PhD studying the dozens of gharial species that have died out. Piece by piece, he reconstructed their family trees from the shape and architecture of their braincases.

According to the Post, modern classification uses a more advanced form of biological morphology, creating a sophisticated approach. It’s pickier and more precise. Instead of extrapolating from one data point about a bone, researchers ask a battery of questions and compare the answers. They might compare its length to the jaw or whether it flares wider toward the back. This synthesis of hundreds of data points can crystallize a fuzzy family resemblance into a sharp picture, helping solve the riddle of the Mokattam croc.

Researchers officially christened the sword-snouted reptile Herugavialis cairensis in honor of Heru, the ancient Egyptian deity linked to the Sphinx. This was no accident. The fossil and the Sphinx came from the same rock.

“We seek to connect Egypt’s deep natural history with its human history,” co-author Hesham Sallam stated, emphasizing the species’ significance to Nile history. Sallam runs the Vertebrate Paleontology Center at Mansoura University, which collaborated on the project.

“Crocodiles were part of the Nile ecosystem, which was central to Egyptian life,” he said, adding that they “held an important place in ancient Egyptian belief and culture.”

Herugavialis itself never laid eyes on a pharaoh. The animal lived during the Middle Eocene, a whopping 50 million years ago, when the ground that is now Cairo lay beneath the sea.

Nobody can claim exactly what it looked like, but its nearest living cousins, the false gharial and the Indian gharial, offer strong clues: a skinny, elongated snout bristling with sharp teeth built for snatching fish.

The skull measures about 18 inches. A typical American crocodile’s skull runs closer to 30.

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