Less than four hundred years ago, in 1630, a tiger-headed, two-winged sea monster appeared on the east coast of Hainan Island in southern China, devouring people and livestock. The governor offered sacrifices of wine and animals to appease him. This highly exaggerated account surely refers to a crocodile, but are there crocodiles in China? Today, the only crocodile in China is the Chinese or Yangtze alligator (Alligator sinensis), which survives in a few rivers in the eastern part of the country. Although in the past its area of distribution was much wider, it is difficult to identify this shy and docile crocodile, which does not exceed two meters in length, and which feeds mainly on fish and frogs, with the Hainan sea monster. Even when venturing into inhabited areas, the alligator never attacks man; the most it can get is to eat a rat, a dog or a chicken. But there are historical documents that indicate that in the past, in southern China, at least in the provinces of Guangdong and Fujian and in the autonomous region of Guangxi, as well as on the island of Hainan, there were larger and more ferocious crocodiles, larger than six meters long. These crocodiles are described as fast, yellowish-brown, dark green, and white animals with very long snouts that ate fish, but occasionally ate deer, cattle, and humans, and even ventured inland. of the houses. When they were full, they floated in the water like drunkards, and people took the opportunity to kill them. At night, they made rumbling sounds. The young, yellow and white in color, were born in the sand, from eggs similar to those of ducks.
In the year 210, General Bu Zhi was appointed governor of the remote province of Jiao, made up of present-day Canton and Guangxi and the north coast of Vietnam. When he arrived in Canton he found in the region sea monsters, soft-shelled turtles, alligators and a different type of crocodile, which the locals called “e”. A few years later, the castle moat in the eastern Guangxi city of Wuzhou was populated by crocodiles, and there were tigers outside the gates. The criminals were thrown to the tigers and crocodiles, and if they survived, after three days they were released. In the early fourth century, it was said that in southern China, crocodiles would stick their heads out of the water and attack ships; the crewmen defended themselves with their war axes, weapons similar to halberds.
At the beginning of the century VIII, the Han River and the lower course of its main tributary, the Ting, between the provinces of Fujian and Canton, were inhabited by crocodiles. Han Yu, a Chinese official and poet then exiled in the Han Delta city of Chaozhou, sacrificed a pig and a goat to the crocodiles, and issued a proclamation threatening to kill them with poisoned arrows if they did not listen to the crocodiles. warning and stayed in the region. In fact, the name of the Han River pays homage to this official, peacemaker of the region; before it was called “exi”, which means “fierce river”. In 849, another poet and official, Li Deyu, also exiled to Chaozhou as the prefect’s military adviser, was demoted to census taker on the island of Hainan. At the beginning of his trip to the island, in a place called “shoal of crocodiles”, the ship was attacked by these animals, and his books and drawings fell into the water; given the large number of crocodiles present, they were unable to rescue them. In 999, in Fengshun, north of Chaozhou, a ten-year-old boy named Zhang was eaten by a crocodile. Chen Yaozuo, another demoted official banished to the south, sent a hundred soldiers led by an experienced fisherman; they captured the crocodiles with nets and brought them to the city, where they were publicly executed for their crimes. The form of execution for crocodiles was decapitation, followed by desiccation. It was said that then, if the teeth were pulled out, after ten days they would come out again, and this could happen up to three times. As late as the 15th century, Xia Yuanji, a government minister, ordered hundreds of ships to dump quicklime into a Han River pond that was infested with crocodiles.
Until now, it was assumed that all these stories referred to the marine crocodile (Crocodylus porosus), and it is possible that in some of them this was the case, but the snout of the marine crocodile is not particularly long, and also this species inhabits salty and brackish, in marshes, deltas and estuaries, while some of the historical documents refer to inland cities: Chaozhou, for example, is located about fifty kilometers upstream from the mouth of the Han, and Wuzhou, in the basin of the river de las Perlas, is more than two hundred and fifty kilometers from its mouth.
The true identity of these crocodiles has come to light this year. On March 9, 2022, a group of scientists from China and Japan have published the description of a new genus and species of gharial, Hanyusuchus sinensis, based on six specimens discovered at various sites in the Pearl River Delta area between 1963 and 1980, to which no importance had been given until now, since at first it was believed that they belonged to a modern species. On the contrary, it is a discovery whose significance goes beyond zoology and paleontology, and which can also shed light on the study of ancient Chinese culture: these crocodiles surely had an influence on the formation of myths such as those of Chinese dragons, which are closely related to water, and not fire like western dragons.
Hanyusuchus has characteristics of both the gharial (Gavialis gangeticus) and the false gharial (Tomistoma schlegelii), the only two living representatives of the hawk family. The hawks are semi-aquatic crocodiles specialized in catching fish; for this, its snout is very long and narrow, with dozens of fine and pointed teeth, and its fingers are webbed. The gharial, which can exceed six meters in length, inhabits the Indian subcontinent, and is in critical danger of extinction; the false gharial, up to five meters long, lives in Southeast Asia; unlike the gharial, which feeds exclusively on aquatic animals (fish, insects, amphibians, crustaceans and turtles), the false gharial has a more general diet; It also captures waterfowl, reptiles and mammals, and cases of attacks on humans have even been documented.
Hanyusuchus is estimated to have been up to six meters in length, as described in the stories. Its name means “Han Yu crocodile,” in honor of the poet and official who launched the anti-crocodile proclamation in the 19th century. VIII. Hanyusuchus’s snout is narrow and elongated, with 116 teeth. The skull is three feet long and forty inches wide. Like that of the gharial, it presents a bulge in the pterygoid bones, called the pterygoid bulla. The pterygoid bones form the posterior part of the palate in reptiles and other vertebrates; in primates they do not exist as such, they are fused with the sphenoid. In the gharial, the pterygoid bulla is only present in mature males, which also have a fleshy growth at the end of the snout called a ghara because its shape is reminiscent of the clay container of that name, typical of India and Pakistan, used to keep the water cold. The ghara and pterygoid bulla are supposed to amplify the gharial’s call, a hissing sound that can be heard 75 meters away. Perhaps in Hanyusuchus the pterygoid bulla, which in its case has a different shape, helped it to produce the rumbling sounds that, according to historical documents, it emitted at night.
All the fossils that have been dated come from more or less the Bronze Age, between three thousand and five thousand years ago, but some of them already show signs of hostilities between crocodiles and humans: one shows seventeen cut marks, narrow and deep, mostly in the skull and one in the joint with the neck; and in another specimen there is a cut in the fourth cervical vertebra that indicates that it was decapitated. The shape of the cuts is compatible with the bronze war axes that were used at the time. We do not know when Hanyusuchus became extinct, but it was surely the government’s extermination policy and the destruction of its habitat due to the extension of agriculture that caused its disappearance.
(Germán Fernández, 05/25/2022)
CONSTRUCTION OF GERMAN FERNÁNDEZ:
reticular infiltrate
Reticular Infiltrator is the first novel in the trilogy The Saga of the Borelians. Do you want to see how it starts? Here you can read the first two chapters.
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