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 these crocodiles, which could grow to about five metres, were plentiful 55 million years ago, long before their modern cousins arrived in Australia.
The drop croc eggshells were discovered several decades ago but only recently analyzed with the help of scientists in Spain.
Since the early 1980s, Prof Archer has been part of a team excavating a clay pit in Murgon, a small town about 270km (168 miles) north-west of Brisbane, known as one of Australia's oldest fossil sites.
The excavation has yielded numerous prehistoric treasures, providing insights into ancient ecosystems that included the world’s oldest-known songbirds and a variety of other reptiles and mammals, indicating a rich past of biodiversity.
