After 210m years, what's a mere 60

An llustration of the skeleton of an early crocodile-like reptile.

NEW YORK - The fossil of a 210 million-year-old "crocodile" creature lost to the annals of history has been rediscoverd - in the basement of a museum after it was misplaced nearly 60 years ago.

The toothless, two-legged archosaur - which had a beak instead of teeth - was found in New York's American Museum of Natural History after being in storage for 60 years. It was found only by accident.

The 2m-long creature, an ancestor of the crocodile, lived in what is now New Mexico, in the southwest of the US. It was discovered in blocks of rock excavated in 1947 and 1948.

Scientists were looking for other fossils when they opened a plaster cast containing the archosaur. The archosaur was related to an ancient group of reptiles called crocodilians. It was not a dinosaur.

- REUTERS