If you’ve grown up in Australia, you might be quite used to them, but for tourists visiting the country for the first time there are often three things that are feared the most: snakes, spiders, and crocodiles.

Why do they give even the most fearless of folks the heebie-jeebies? Well it’s a logical, visceral reaction to the deadliness of these creatures – and as evolved humans, we’re well-programmed to avoid anything that could lead to us coming to a sudden, visceral end.

Likely one of the first things you’ll learn when arriving in the country – especially if your visit takes you to the Northern Territory – is how to avoid the crocs – salties and freshies, as they’re colloquially known, thanks differing species’ preference for saltwater and freshwater.

And this means that anywhere there’s water, there could be a croc lurking – and that’s not alarming at all, right Australia?

But at least nowadays we can just give all water a wide berth – according to a new paper from researchers at the University of New South Wales, Sydney, one species of croc would have been much harder to avoid in the past.

In a disturbing revelation, UNSW’s Professor Michael Archer explained in a statement that a long-extinct croc named Wakkaoolithus godthelpi could have been lurking somewhere quite unexpected – in trees:

“It’s a bizarre idea, but some of them appear to have been terrestrial hunters in the forests.”

And this very un-croc-like hiding place (by today’s standards at least) would have spelled sudden death for anyone wandering beneath the leaves.

In their study, which was recently published in the Journal of Vertebrate Palaeontology, the scientists explained that they identified the new species from shells from Australia’s earliest crocs – in fact, they were present in Australia 55 million years ago, approximately 31 million years before today’s salties and freshies.

And these early crocs were masters of adaptation, learning to climb trees despite their five meter’s plus of length, as they evolved from a solely aquatic to a semi-aquatic species. And a big part of this adaptation was their hunting skills, as Professor Archer continued:

“Some were also apparently at least partly semi-arboreal ‘drop crocs’. They were perhaps hunting like leopards – dropping out of trees on any unsuspecting thing they fancied for dinner.”

So if you’re planning your trip to Aus, be glad that today’s crocodiles are at least a little more predictable.

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