A remarkable paleontological discovery has been made at the Bełchatów coal mine in central Poland: the fossilized remains of a crocodile dating back approximately 17 million years. The remains originate from the Miocene epoch.
The discovery was made in the Szczerców field of the Bełchatów mine by a team of researchers from the Faculty of Geology and Faculty of Biology at the University of Warsaw, the Institute of Paleobiology of the Polish Academy of Sciences (PAS), the PAS Museum of the Earth, and the Moravian Museum in the Czech Republic.
The remains found in the Belchatow mine date from the Miocene epoch (23 million to 5.3 million years ago), the last such warm and humid period in Earth’s history. The early and middle Miocene in particular was characterized by particularly high temperatures (the so-called Miocene Climatic Optimum). While older crocodilian remains from the Cretaceous have been found in Sweden and Paleogene-era fossils in Denmark and Canada’s Arctic, none from this era have been found this far north.
Among the animals of interest from this period are crocodiles—typically associated with subtropical and tropical zones. During the early and middle Miocene, Central Europe was home to two main genera: Gavialosuchus, a marine crocodile reaching over 6 meters in length, and Diplocynodon, an endemic freshwater genus that grew to 1.5–3 meters.
“The scute we found lacks definitive features linking it to a specific genus,” noted Dr. Górka. “However, it was most likely from an extinct species of Diplocynodon, a relative of today’s alligators. Like modern alligators, it likely tolerated cooler climates, allowing it to live farther north.”
Finding such a small fragment—just 30 mm long—in a vast mining area is no easy feat.
“It’s a bit like mushroom picking—you need both luck and a trained eye,” Dr. Górka said.
The paper, published by a Polish-Czech team of researchers, presents several earlier finds of crocodile remains from the Czech Republic and Poland. The described material also includes an archival find of a crocodile tooth from shallow-water marine sediments from Pinczow. This tooth was discovered by Prof. Andrzej Radwański in the 1960s-70s. Another of the presented remains is a tooth from Židlochovice, Czech Republic, from about 14 million years ago. It came from the collection of Prof. Anton Rzehak, but was never mentioned in any of his works, even though the researcher correctly identified it as a crocodile tooth on a handwritten label.
The discovery was described in an article published in the journal Acta Palaeontologica Polonica.
Photo credit: Marcin Górka
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