Meet the ‘Witch Croc,’ a Strange Ancient Crocodile Relative With Two Legs and No Teeth That Roamed New Mexico During the Triassic

The reptile, a dinosaur look-alike called a shuvosaur, represents a long-awaited discovery that helps paleontologists fill a gap in the fossil record

Margherita Bassi | Daily Correspondent

June 8, 2026 12:09 p.m.

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Paleontologists have identified a new ancient crocodile relative, although it looked nothing like the terrifying semi-aquatic animals of today.

The newfound reptile, named Labrujasuchus expectatus, had a toothless beak, tiny arms and walked on two legs, according to a study published May 26 in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. The discovery, which researchers have long awaited, should help bridge a gap in the fossil record.

L. expectatus’ bones were discovered in 2006 in an approximately 212-million-year-old quarry, indicating that the creature lived during the late Triassic period. Paleontologists recovered leg and arm bones, parts of the spine and other remains at Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, a famous fossil site whose landscape was featured in several paintings by Georgia O’Keeffe.

The newly identified genus and species resemble ostrich-like dinosaurs called ornithomimosaurs, which lived during the Cretaceous period, some 66 million to 145 million years ago. However, L. expectatus wasn’t even a dinosaur. It was a type of shuvosaur, part of a group of dino look-alikes within the evolutionary branch that gave rise to modern-day crocodiles.

To those who would point out that crocs move on four legs and have tons of teeth, Alan Turner, lead author of the study and a paleontologist at Stony Brook University, explains that L. expectatus reptiles were “definitely not direct ancestors to modern alligators and crocodiles,” he tells Scientific American’s Adam Kovac. “You can think of them as like a very, very distant cousin. They split hundreds of millions of years ago from the group that eventually leads us to alligators and crocodiles. It’s sort of a side branch.”

Biodiversity and body plans went through drastic changes during the Triassic period, which spanned 201 million to 252 million years ago. “We see a lot of the successful strategies for modern animals and non-avian dinosaurs first arise in the Triassic, and shuvosaurs are a great example of that convergent evolution,” Turner says in a statement. “Bipedalism is certainly a unique path for crocodile relatives to take, but it’s a path well-trod by dinosaurs and later birds. It obviously worked for these animals.”

L. expectatus doesn’t just represent a strange new genus and species, however—it also helps connect some dots in the fossil record. Namely, it fits in between two shuvosaurs previously discovered in the same area, an evolutionary puzzle piece whose existence paleontologists had theorized but not yet found.

“Finding one shuvosaur from earlier in the Triassic and one from later meant that we paleontologists knew there were probably more from in-between waiting to be discovered and described,” study co-author Nathan Smith, a paleontologist and director of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County’s Dinosaur Institute, says in the statement.

The finding’s characterization as the “expected unexpected” was honored in the animal’s species name, expactatus. Its genus name, Labrujasuchus (pronounced la-broo-ha-soo-kus), references an old Spanish name for Ghost Ranch, “Ranchos de los Brujos,” which means Ranch of the Witches, in combination with the Greek “suchus,” which translates to crocodile.

The study comes in the wake of another croc-related Triassic genus and species whose bones were discovered at Ghost Ranch. Called Eosphorosuchus lacrimosa, this jackal-size animal had a short snout, strong skull and large jaw muscles to chomp on prey, researchers reported April 15 in the journal Proceedings of the Royal Society B.

While the fossil was unearthed in 1948, its identity only recently came to light. The bones were housed in the Yale Peabody Museum’s basement for decades, says study co-author and Yale paleontologist Miranda Margulis-Ohnuma to Live Science’s Skyler Ware. But she noticed some differences between this fossil’s facial structure and that of other members of the genus it was previously identified as, which spurred an investigation, per a statement.  

“For early crocs, we’re very data deficient, so every new fossil that comes out is changing the story,” Margulis-Ohnuma tells Live Science. “If we can continue to describe this material that we have, and ideally find new fossils, it will change the story every single time.”

Margherita Bassi | Read More

Margherita Bassi is a freelance journalist and trilingual storyteller. Her work has appeared in publications including BBC Travel, Discover magazine, Live Science, Atlas Obscura and Hidden Compass.