The "Drügendorf croc", a geosaurine metriorhynchid fossil housed in the Heimatmuseum Ebermannstadt (northern Bavaria), accompanies me now for nearly five years. When I encountered it first in 2015, it was still labeled as a pliosaur of the genus Peloneustes, due to a first unofficial classification 15 years earlier. Yet, in my Bachelor's thesis and a following-up paper (Abel et al. 2020) with my colleagues Sven Sachs and Mark Young, it has been demonstrated that the fossil actually belongs to a marine crocodile. Even more, we could show that the "Drügendorf croc" and a number of other barely known specimens actually belong to a novel branch of the metriorhynchid subfamily Geosaurinae (currently dubbed "E-clade").
With the first formal description of the fossil out, the Heimatmuseum Ebermannstadt decided to update the exhibition of the "Drügendorf croc" and it has been an honor for me to support this endeavor by wirting new information texts. I'm also very happy that the museum decided to use the life reconstruction created by paleoartist Joschua Knüppe (which you will also find in several occasions on this website, hehe).
The painting of the limestone layers in the background was originally done by local painter Erich Müller. The original arrangement was (to my knowledge) created by Dr. Hans Weisel, Dr. Manfred Franze, and Anton Hostalka.
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