Huge crocodiles roamed central Australia
A special exhibit in the Museum and Art Gallery of the Northern Territory features a large crocodile skull. It was recovered 200 km (125 miles) north of Alice Springs in the middle of Australia. The find points to a climate very different from the parched and barren landscape there at present. Dr Adam Yates, senior curator of earth sciences at the Northern Territory Museum said, “It’s somewhat surprising to imagine that central Australia had rivers to support crocodiles.”
However, it is not surprising from a biblical perspective. Enormous ‘rivers’ flowed across the continent at the tail-end of Noah’s Flood, as the last of the floodwaters drained into the oceans, some 4,500 years ago. They carried sediment and the decomposing remains of animals that perished earlier in the Flood, such as this crocodile. Rivers also flowed in the area after the Flood during the post-Flood ice age when rainfall was much greater, as occurred in many places globally. (See: Well watered deserts, Creation 42(2):46–49, 2020.) However, it is unlikely the crocodile was fossilized then, because it is unlikely the rivers would have carried enough sediment to bury it quickly.
- Australia crocodile: Skull identified as part of new extinct species; bbc.com, 17 May 2021.
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