Creationism Refuted - Australian Crocodyls Are Fatal To Creationism

Saltwater crocodile, Crocodylus poros

By Molly Ebersold St Augustine's Alligator Farm, Public Domain, Link

Jorgo Ristevski, CC BY

129,000 years of crocodiles: what we know about Australasia’s ancient apex predators

According to Bronze Age Biblical mythology, existing species should have no ancestors because they were all supposedly magicked into existence fully formed during a few days of creation, just a few thousand years ago.

That childish belief has to be clung to by creationists despite the evidence of the real world, which tells a very different story: not of sudden manufacture, but of deep evolutionary history, extinction, replacement and survival. The iconic saltwater crocodiles of northern Australia provide a good example. They are not isolated products of a one-off act of creation, but living survivors of a much richer Australasian crocodylian history stretching back tens of millions of years, during which crocodile relatives occupied a variety of ecological niches, including those of formidable predators.

Modern Australia has only two native crocodile species: the freshwater crocodile, Crocodylus johnstoni , and the Indo-Pacific or saltwater crocodile, Crocodylus porosus. But the fossil and archaeological evidence shows that these are merely the remnant survivors of a once more diverse crocodylian fauna, including the now-extinct mekosuchines, a distinctive Australasian group whose members included species very unlike the crocodiles familiar today.

Now a group of researchers from the University of Queensland and Griffith University, together with colleagues from several other institutions, has pieced together the fragmentary evidence from 26 fossil and archaeological sites across Australasia to build a clearer picture of the crocodylians that once lived in the region, and of their interactions with humans. Their review of the evidence was recently published, open access, in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society.

The study shows that the late Pleistocene record of Australian crocodylians is still incomplete and often difficult to date securely, but it nevertheless reveals a lost diversity. The extinct mekosuchines appear to have declined and disappeared on mainland Australia around the same broad period as other Australian megafauna, while some survived much later on south-west Pacific islands such as New Caledonia, Vanuatu and Fiji. There, their remains occur in archaeological contexts, suggesting that they persisted until after human arrival and may have been affected by human activity.

Three of the authors have also written an article in The Conversation, explaining their research and its significance for understanding the evolutionary history of these reptiles. Their article is reprinted here under a Creative Commons licence, reformatted for stylistic consistency:

Published: May 19, 2026 9.08pm BST

129,000 years of crocodiles: what we know about Australasia’s ancient apex predators

Jorgo Ristevski, CC BY

Jorgo Ristevski, The University of Queensland ; Julien Louys, Griffith University , and Nicole Boivin, The University of Queensland

The sight of a saltwater crocodile basking on a mudbank is one of the most iconic and intimidating images of northern Australia. Yet the crocodiles that inhabit the region today are just the survivors of a much richer and stranger lost world.

Until recently, Australasia was home not just to the familiar crocodiles found in tropical waterways, but also to a unique cast of crocs unlike any living species.

Our recent review of evidence from the past 129,000 years reveals a dramatic story of extinctions, human encounters, and survival against the odds.

Mekosuchines – the lost rulers of Australasia

Modern crocodiles are members of the genus Crocodylus , but an entirely different group of crocodylians known as mekosuchines once dominated the region.

For more than 50 million years, mekosuchines were the apex predators of Australasia. Some even survived to meet humans.

These remarkable animals came in an astonishing variety of shapes and sizes, inhabiting many different environments.

Some were giant semi-aquatic ambush predators, much like the saltwater crocodiles that still patrol northern rivers today. Others were much smaller “dwarf” species that inhabited islands such as New Caledonia. Most terrifyingly, some species possessed blade-like serrated teeth and probably hunted their prey on land.

A fragmentary puzzle

We pieced together a record of crocodylians over the past 129,000 years from scattered and highly fragmentary remains recovered from more than 20 archaeological and palaeontological sites.

Most are located in Australia, though some are found in New Guinea, and a handful more across the southwest Pacific. At archaeological sites on the Australian mainland, as well as in the Torres Strait and New Guinea, researchers have uncovered the broken bones and teeth of modern crocodile species, showing that these formidable reptiles have shared landscapes with people for thousands of years.

Ancient rock art, some dating back around 20,000 years, reveals that Indigenous Australians were closely observing and depicting these animals for millennia. The distribution of archaeological remains and rock art closely mirrors the modern ranges of crocodiles today. This points to a long and relatively stable coexistence between humans and these powerful predators.

Crocodylian remains have been found at sites across Australasia dated over the past 129,000 years.

Jorgo Ristevski, CC BY

Archaeological evidence shows that humans did occasionally eat crocodiles, and sometimes even crafted pendants from their teeth. Yet such discoveries are quite rare. When ancient archaeological sites do yield crocodile bones, there are usually only a handful of them.

The evidence suggests crocodiles were hunted only rarely. This is not surprising.

Adult saltwater crocodiles are enormous, immensely powerful, and highly lethal to humans. For ancient communities, engaging with these apex predators would have been a hazardous undertaking, and something mostly avoided.

But modern crocodiles weren’t alone in these ancient landscapes. Fossils show they shared them with the mekosuchines.

On mainland Australia, mekosuchines are currently only known from fossils. Most remains date from more than 40,000 years ago. We currently have no evidence of these extinct crocs from archaeological sites or in ancient rock art.

We don’t know if humans and mekosuchines ever directly interacted in Australia. Their disappearance occurred around the same time as the extinction of other Australian megafauna, potentially after a long period of coexistence with humans. The exact cause of their demise in Australia remains a mystery.

Island extinctions

However, the story is different on the islands of New Caledonia, Vanuatu and Fiji. There, some mekosuchine species managed to survive into much more recent times. And humans almost certainly encountered them directly.

The extinct crocs of New Caledonia and Vanuatu were small, reaching less than two metres in length as adults. They also likely lived more on land than today’s semi-aquatic crocodiles. Their small statures and terrestrial lives would have made them far more accessible for human hunters.

Size comparisons between the largest (the living saltwater crocodile, Crocodylus porosus) and smallest (the extinct dwarf crocs of New Caledonia and Vanuatu, Mekosuchus) known crocodylian species from the past 129,000 years in Australasia.

Jorgo Ristevski, CC BY

Tragically, the known record of these island mekosuchines ends within a few centuries of human settlement. In several cases, their remains were found in association with human artefacts and middens.

In one example from Vanuatu, a mekosuchine limb bone appears to bear the gnaw marks of a rat, an invasive species introduced to the island by humans. While definitive proof is elusive, it seems likely that direct or indirect human involvement may be the reason for the disappearance of these “dwarf” island crocodylians.

Lessons for the Anthropocene

We are now living through the Anthropocene, an age when humans are profoundly influencing the planet and extinctions are accelerating, as is particularly evident in Australia.

The prehistoric past is not just a record of vanished worlds, but a warning for the future. Understanding how apex predators like crocodiles responded to past climatic changes, environmental upheaval, and human impacts provides important clues for their conservation in the future.

To truly unravel these questions will take the combined work of palaeontologists, archaeologists, ecologists and conservationists. Just as crucial will be deep engagement with Indigenous knowledges and land managers, whose long histories of observing and living alongside these animals offer clues for protecting the world’s remaining crocodiles, and the threatened ecosystems they inhabit. Jorgo Ristevski, Researcher, Palaeontology, The University of Queensland ; Julien Louys, Professor, Palaeontology, Griffith University , and Nicole Boivin, Honorary Professor, Archaeology, The University of Queensland

This article is republished from The Conversation under a Creative Commons license. Read the original article.

Published by The Conversation. Open access. (CC BY 4.0)

Show publication details

Abstract In this study, we synthesize the known late Quaternary crocodylian record in Australasia through literature review and direct assessment of fossil and zooarchaeological material. The late Pleistocene record, mainly from Australia, consists of partial skeletal remains mostly referable to the extinct Mekosuchinae, with some attributable to Crocodylus. The youngest reliably dated mekosuchine fossil is ∼20 000 years old, suggesting mekosuchine decline and extinction coincided with that of other Australian megafauna. In contrast, three south-west Pacific islands—New Caledonia, Vanuatu, and Fiji—were Holocene refuges for mekosuchines, whose remains occur in archaeological contexts, indicating human interaction. Their extinction followed soon after human arrival, suggesting anthropogenic influence as a potential key factor. Crocodylus johnstoni occurs in palaeontological (potentially 28 kya) and archaeological sites in Australia. Crocodylus porosus has an ambiguous fossil record potentially going back over 40 kya, but is definitively present by the Holocene. Most Crocodylus remains come from coastal sites overlapping modern ranges. Archaeological evidence supports crocodile utilization by humans in Australia, Torres Strait, and New Guinea. The fragmentary nature of the known fossil material, as well as the current lack of reliable dates, leaves many unanswered questions about the morphology, palaeobiology, and disappearance of mekosuchines.

Jorgo Ristevski, Julien Louys, Sue O’Connor, Adam M Yates, Molly Husdell, Gilbert J Price, Sean Ulm, Ian J McNiven, Steven W Salisbury, Nicole Boivin The late Quaternary crocodylian record from Australasia Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, 207(1), May 2026, zlag065, https://doi.org/10.1093/zoolinnean/zlag065

The archaeological evidence does not show a world in which all species appeared fully formed in a single act of magic a few thousand years ago. It shows a world with a long, complex, and changing history: lineages appearing, diversifying, moving, adapting, declining and sometimes disappearing altogether. The crocodiles of Australasia are not exceptions to that pattern; they are another illustration of it.

What makes this especially awkward for creationists is that the evidence comes from the very places where humans and these animals overlapped. Bones, fossils, archaeological deposits, dating methods, extinction patterns and surviving species all fit into a coherent picture of ecological and evolutionary change over tens of thousands, and in the wider crocodylian lineage, millions of years. None of it requires a magic creation, a global flood, or a sudden population reset by eight survivors in a wooden boat.

By contrast, creationism contributes nothing to understanding this evidence. It does not predict why extinct mekosuchines should be found in some places and not others, why island species should survive later than mainland forms, why modern Australia should be left with only two native crocodile species, or why the fossil and archaeological record should show succession, disappearance and survival rather than a single, simultaneous act of creation.

Science, however, can take fragmentary evidence from scattered sites and turn it into a testable, revisable account of the past. That account may be incomplete, but it is grounded in evidence and open to correction. Creationism begins with a conclusion dictated by ancient mythology and then tries to force the facts to fit it. The difference is the difference between investigation and dogma.

So, once again, the evidence does what evidence so often does: it quietly dismantles creationist certainty. The bones of ancient crocodiles do not speak of a recent magical creation; they speak of deep time, changing environments, extinction, survival and evolution — exactly the sort of history predicted by biology, archaeology and palaeontology, and exactly the sort of history creationism has to deny.

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