Large 2.5" Cretaceous Crocodile Scute - Kem Kem Beds

This is a very large, and well preserved dermal scute (armor plate) from an unidentified crocodilian. It was collected from the Late Cretaceous, Kem Kem Beds in Southern Morocco. The Kem Kem Beds are famous for yielding a diverse vertebrate assemblage including fish, reptiles and dinosaurs such as Spinosaurus.

These fossils are found in a thin bed that outcrops around the edge of a large plateau. Local miners collect these fossils by digging tunnels into this plateau following this layer. A paper on this assemblage can be found at: Vertebrate assemblages from the early Late Cretaceous of southeasternMorocco: An overview