Shattered crocodile. Formally, Confractosuchus. It was discovered in Australia when a bulldozer clearing a boulder broke a stone into pieces. Exposed portions of the broken-up rock made clear that fossils were inside, but there was no immediate sign that this discovery would later reveal an unprecedented snapshot of life from the Cretaceous Period.
Paleontologist Matt White of the University of New England in Armidale, Australia, and colleagues arranged to have the fossil-laden rock scanned with X-ray computed tomography. Like a medical CT scan, the method takes multiple images of an object that can be assembled into a 3-D map of the interior. The team hoped to use the scans as
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