World’s largest crocodile estimated to be 120 years old

TheGuinness World Record-holding crocodile,Cassius, the largest in the world, is celebrating what is believe to be his 120th birthday. It was captured in the Finniss River, in the La Belle Station area of Australia’s Northern Territory, in 1984.

“He was 16 feet, 10 inches with at least another 6 inches of tail missing and a bit of a snout missing,” Graeme Webb, one of the scientists who captured Cassius, recalled in an interviewwith the Australian Broadcasting Corp.

The crocodile now lives at Marineland Crocodile Park on Green Island in the Great Barrier Reef in Queensland.

Ancient mastodon tooth found on beach

Jennifer Schuh was taking a stroll on Rio Del Mar State Beach, Santa Cruz, California, and found a tooth from an ancient mastodon buried in the sand. She then posted the pictures of the foot-long tooth on Facebook seeking help, and catching the attention of Wayne Thompson, a palaeontology collections advisor.

Thompson confirmed it was a worn molar from an adult Pacific mastodon, an extinct elephant-like species. However, when they

returned to the beach, the tooth had vanished. It was found by another jogger and handed over to the museum.

The exact age of the tooth remains uncertain, but is estimated to be less than one million years old. Mastodons inhabited California between five million and 10,000 years ago. A museum already possesses another tooth and a skull, discovered in 1980 from the same Aptos Creek.

685 people dressed as Spider-Man

It seemed a scene straight out of the hit filmAcross the Spider-Versewhen 685 people dressed as various incarnations of Spider-Man gathered at a mall in Malaysia.

The event, organised by Sony Pictures Malaysia and AEON Mall,a shopping centre in Bukit Tinggi, had people dressed in the costumes of various versions of the Marvel hero, including Peter Parker, Miles Morales, Miguel O’Hara and Gwen Stacy.

A Guinness World Records adjudicatorat the mallverified the count and ensured that each participant spent at least five minutes in the designated area. This broke the previous record of 601 people who donned Spider-Man suits at an event in India in December 2021.

Rare spotting of wolverine in California

Wildlife officials in California said a wolverine spotted multiple times recently is only the second of its species to be seen in the state in the past 100 years. It was seen twice in the Inyo National Forest and once in Yosemite National Park. All the sightings occurred in May.

A wolverine was previously spotted in 2008 in the Tahoe National Forest, and on multiple subsequent occasions through 2018. Since wolverines can travel great distances, it is likely that the recent sightings are all of the same animal.

The recent wolverine sighting would be a different one from the earlier one due to the typical 12-to-13-year lifespans of the animal in the wild. The previous wolverine sightings in California were in the early 1920s.

A wolverine is stocky and muscular build, with sharp claws and powerful jaws. It is fierce and resilient in the wild. The fictional character Wolverine from Marvel Comics was named after this animal due to its aggressive nature.

Published in Dawn, Young World, June 17th, 2023