Regular Episode
#152 – RAMPAGE: A HUGE CROC
What starts as a light excuse to throw science at a popcorn movie premise quickly turns into a deep, funny, and genuinely illuminating conversation about one of the planet’s most successful lineages of predators.
🦎 The Curious Path to Fossil Crocodiles
Paul’s interest in fossils traces back, as he cheerfully notes, to before he was even a zygote — his parents unwittingly collected a fossil sea urchin on their honeymoon, and he found his first fossil at age six. His pivot to crocodiles was more pragmatic: his PhD supervisor at UNSW, palaeontologist Mike Archer, had a drawer full of unstudied Australian fossil crocs and no dinosaurs to offer. Within two weeks, Paul was the world’s leading authority on Australian fossil crocodiles — his career advice being, simply, “if you want to be outstanding in your field, pick an empty one.”
His research revealed an entire endemic group of Australian crocodilians he calls the Mekosuchinae, which diversified to fill ecological niches left vacant on the isolated continent. Some took on goanna-like body forms — small, narrow-headed, possibly arboreal. Others evolved serrated, blade-like teeth and cursorial limbs for hunting on land, and reached up to six metres in length. All went extinct within the last 10,000–20,000 years, alongside the broader Australian megafaunal collapse.
🐊 Crocodiles vs. Alligators — And the “Living Fossil” Problem
Crocodilians diverged from one another roughly 80 million years ago, near the end of the age of the dinosaurs — meaning any two living species carry around 160 million years of cumulative evolutionary distance. The outward similarity between crocodiles and alligators is a textbook case of convergent evolution: they look alike because they do the same job, not because they haven’t changed. Paul dismantles the “living fossil” framing firmly — DNA differences are measurable and substantial; the species alive today are not the same species as those from 80 million years ago. He reserves the term “living fossil” for the Australian lungfish (Neoceratodus forsteri), whose living individuals are morphologically indistinguishable from 110-million-year-old opal fossils from Lightning Ridge.
For those who want a practical field guide: alligators have a broad, U-shaped snout; their lower teeth slot into pits inside the upper jaw (invisible when the mouth is closed). Crocodiles have a V-shaped snout with a notch on each side where the large fourth mandibular tooth protrudes visibly even when the mouth is shut — that characteristic “toothy grin.”
🌊 Biology, Behaviour, and Things That Will Kill You
Paul divides living crocodilians into two broad ecomorphs: broad-snouted ambush predators (the ones to worry about) and long-snouted fish eaters. The ambush specialists — including the saltwater crocodile — are masters of hiding a very large animal in a very small puddle. Their bite force approaches that of Tyrannosaurus rex: roughly 11 tonnes per square inch. Killing is accomplished by the death roll or violent shaking — crocodilians lack shearing teeth entirely, so dismemberment requires brute mechanical force. Paul confirms that storing prey underwater to soften it has been recorded, though hungry crocodiles will eat immediately when they can.
A counterintuitive medical note: being bitten by a thin-snouted fish-eating crocodile (like the gharial) may actually be worse than being bitten by a saltie, because the long, slender teeth drive necrotic tissue deep into the wound. Wounds sealed without proper debridement routinely go gangrenous. Paul’s advice: don’t get bitten by a crocodile at all.
The saltwater crocodile — more accurately called the Asian Pacific crocodile (Crocodylus porosus) — is the oldest extant crocodilian species, with fossils dating back around two million years. It ranges from Australia to Fiji and has been tracked travelling 200–400 kilometres in a single month at sea, aided by specialised salt-excreting glands on the tongue. Paul attributes the spread of the entire genus Crocodylus across the tropics to a saltwater-swimming ancestor radiating around the equator over the last two million years.
🦴 Super Crocs: The Fossil Giants
The episode covers two of the largest crocodilians known from the fossil record:
– Sarcosuchus imperator (“SuperCroc”) — first found by German palaeontologist Ernst Stromer in Egypt in 1908; the original specimens were destroyed when Allied bombing raids hit German museum collections during World War II. Paul Sereno rediscovered sites and recovered complete skeletons in the late 1980s–early 1990s with National Geographic support. Estimated length: up to ~14–15 metres. Despite its enormous jaws, the long, thin snout marks it as a fish eater, not a dinosaur predator.
– Deinosuchus — found in Texas and the western USA in the same Late Cretaceous deposits as Tyrannosaurus; a broad-snouted ambush predator reaching ~15 metres. Paul has personally handled one side of a Deinosuchus jaw in an Austin museum — it measured two metres on its own. He suggests it would have had no difficulty taking an adult T. rex at the water’s edge.
Among living crocodilians, the authenticated record sits at around 9.3 metres (a near-tie between a gharial and a saltwater crocodile). James Cook reportedly logged a crocodile swimming alongside HMS Endeavour off the Australian coast that measured 32 feet (~10 metres) against the gunwales — intriguing but not rigorously verifiable. A similar unsubstantiated account from Queensland’s Gulf Country describes a crocodile whose body spanned an entire road crossing plus overhangs at both ends, suggesting something over 10 metres.
🎬 Rampage (2018): A Brief Scientific Assessment
Paul’s verdict on the mutant crocodile in 🎬 Rampage 💵 is delivered with characteristic economy: “both sex and travel.” Beyond the obvious scale impossibility — no bone material can support a body mass that large on land, as even the largest known sauropod trackways from Western Australia (~35–40 metres, ~90 tonnes) represent an apparent biological ceiling — Paul notes that the film inexplicably gives the crocodile gills, and that the flying wolf and Dwayne Johnson’s musculature are also not particularly realistic. He will be seeing it anyway, because he has kids and they are a convenient excuse.
The conversation also briefly tours other giant-croc cinema: 🎬 Lake Placid 💵 (1999) draws criticism for getting the teeth morphology wrong and dramatically overstating maximum size; 🎬 Alligator 💵 (1980) gets a nod as part of the sewer-gator urban legend tradition. Paul notes that while alligators in New York sewers have never been authenticated, a genuine mystery carcass — apparently a 1.5–2 metre crocodile — was photographed in the suburbs of Manchester, England, and reported (inevitably) in the Daily Mail.
🔬 Science Communication and the Problem of Relevance
In the episode’s most expansive segment, Paul argues that mainstream science communication has spent decades prioritising “inspiring” science — distant black holes, Mars surface conditions — as a kind of distraction from the genuinely urgent science of climate change, resource depletion, and population. He contends that the anti-expertise sentiment visible in contemporary politics is less a cause than a symptom: when scientific findings directly challenge an ideological or economic worldview, the worldview wins, because accepting the evidence would require rebuilding everything.
Blake and Karen note the parallel to the broader skeptical project of MonsterTalk: critical thinking, evidence evaluation, and respect for expertise are not just academic virtues — they are load-bearing structures for navigating a complicated world.
📚 Further Reading
– 🎬 Rampage 💵 (2018), directed by Brad Peyton — the nominal occasion for this episode
– 🎬 Lake Placid 💵 (1999) — giant croc horror, anatomically critiqued
– 🎬 Alligator 💵 (1980) — the sewer-gator movie Blake had in mind
🔗 Related Links
– Paul Willis (Wikipedia)
– Mekosuchinae — the extinct endemic Australian crocodilians
– Saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus)
– Sarcosuchus imperator (“SuperCroc”)
– Deinosuchus
– Gharial (Gavialis gangeticus) — critically endangered fish-eating crocodilian
– Chinese alligator — critically endangered
– Queensland lungfish (Neoceratodus forsteri) — Paul’s preferred “true” living fossil
– Death roll — crocodilian prey-killing technique
– Convergent evolution
Note: ads inserted into the distributed audio alter the timestamps in unpredictable ways, so timing references in these notes are approximate.
In the new movie Rampage, a giant mutant crocodile joins up with a giant ape and a giant wolf to destroy Chicago. But this is not the first giant croc to hit the big screen. Lake Placid (1999) and Alligator (1980) are just two of the many horror films that pit giant crocodilians against puny humans. The fossil record tells us that giant crocs did once roam the earth, but are they still out there today? Join us as we talk with Dr. Paul Willis about crocodiles, alligators and the facts and myths surrounding these amazing but dangerous animals.
Of Interest
- Paul Willis page at ABC (Australian Broadcasting)
- Paul Willis (Wikipedia)
- Royal Institute of Australia –
- Media Engagement Services
- Articles/Books
- (Graphic Violence) Crocodile attack videos
Music
- Monstertalk Theme: Monster by Peach Stealing Monkeys
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