Megalopseudosuchus

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Megalopseudosuchus alabamaensis ("giant false crocodile from alabama") is a fictional genus and species of gigantic prehistoric amphibian invented by fantasist Caitlin R. Kiernan in her 2003 novel, Low Red Moon. One of the novel's main characters, a young woman named Chance Matthews is a paleontologist who discovers the animals remains "exposed by bulldozers clearing a patch of land north of Birmingham to make room for a new Wal-Mart." The fossil is found in layers of siltstone within the Pennsylvanian Pottsville Formation of north-central Alabama. Chance then names the new creature in a paper published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. The novel gives the length of the preserved portion of the skeleton (complete minus the tip of the tail, which was destroyed by the bulldozers) as twelve feet, eight inches (almost four meters). The fossil bones are described by Kiernan as being jet black in color.

[edit] References

Low Red Moon, Caitlin R. Kiernan (Roc, 2003; see pp. 32-46).