“SuperCroc: it didn’t walk with dinosaurs.... it ate them! ”

In the parched Sahara desert, Dr Paul Sereno uncovers the skull of a ten-ton giant SuperCroc, the size of a school bus and one of the largest crocs to have lived.

Sereno joins forces with reptile expert Dr Brady Barr for an around-the-globe adventure-packed quest to flesh out this ancient 40-foot croc. Computer animation takes viewers back in time to see how SuperCroc might have lived and battled for its food.

From the blistering sands of the Sahara, palaeontologist Paul Sereno has pulled an incredible find: the nearly complete remains of Sarcosuchus imperator, one of the largest crocodilians to ever walk the Earth.

As long as a city bus, and weighing in at about ten tons, ‘SuperCroc’ lives up to its nickname.

Sarcosuchus imperator, or ‘flesh crocodile emperor’, is thought to have lived when rivers still coursed over what is now sub-Saharan Africa. Sarcosuchus prowled the river banks, crushing fish and other creatures in its massive jaws.

Palaeontologists first gave Sarcosuchus imperator a name in the 1960s. Four decades later, in 2000, National Geographic Explorer-in-Residence Sereno and his team of fossil hunters found Sarcosuchus’ remains so enormous they dubbed the creature SuperCroc.

Sereno and his team, funded in part by the National Geographic Society, pored through the hot sands of a fossil graveyard called Gadoufaoua in Niger, unearthing scores of Sarcosuchus remains, including vertebrae, limb bones, armour plates, jaws, and a nearly complete 6-foot (1.8-meter) skull.

From their find, Sereno believes SuperCroc weighed as much as ten tons and measured as long as 40 feet (12 meters). Now Sereno has teamed with National Geographic’s resident herpetologist, Brady Barr.

They’re studying today’s tiny-by-comparison crocodilians - alligators, crocodiles, caimans, and gavials - to learn more about the giant SuperCroc, which is undoubtedly one of the largest crocs that ever lived.

For more details about SuperCroc and its history, please visit the National Geographic website.