A giant crocodile in Chelas

What if I told you that, once upon a time, there was a crocodile in.. the Chelas neighborhood? You can check it out at the Geological Museum, in rua Academia das Ciências, Príncipe Real - or, at least, what is left of it!

The ancestors of the animals that now belong in the African landscape existed, millions of years ago, in Chelas, Charneca and Lumiar. With a hot and humid climate, the oriental part of Lisbon was, in those times, a dense forest with big puddles and ponds. That is also why you can find in this museum fossils of this crocodile’s friends… or foes: behemoths, rhinoceros, hippos…And even tigers!

The fossilized head of a “super crocodile” in exhibition belongs to an animal who lived in the Bela Vista Park, in Chelas, twelve million years ago. This crocodile would’ve had nine meters of length!