Courtedoux, Jura, Switzerland (Le Temps, Fre) – Paleontologists in this small town on the Swiss-French border have made an exciting and rare find: a 152 million-year-old skeleton belonging to a sea-faring crocodile, Metriorhynchus. The seas would have been 25C, as warm as the Bahamas today, and the crocodile would have lived at the same time as the flying dinosaurs, Pterosaurus, reports Le Temps writer Serge Jubin.

The skeleton was discovered in June during excavation work in the area, on a site known as Ali Baba’s cavern for the early riches it holds. Until now, digs in Switzerland have turned up fossils and bits and pieces of creatures but not such a large part of a skeleton: for now, scientists say they probably have 40-50% of the skeleton, uncovered slowly during months of painstaking work.

The excavation work is part of a large paleontological project that began in 2000 and will contnue until autoroute construction begins in the area in two to three years.

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