KANAB -- A 75.5-million-year-old fossil found in southern Utah was once a supercrocodile that snacked on 10-foot sturgeons and devoured land-dwelling dinosaurs, a paleontologist said.

"The fish were like a sushi appetizer to tide it over before the steak," said Alan Titus, paleontologist for the Grand Staircase-Escalante National Monument. "It was just as big as Tyrannosaurus but lived in water."

Titus uncovered about a quarter of the 30-foot creature's upper snout in June on the fossil-rich Kaiparowits Plateau in Kane County.

The crocodile's size can be determined from fossilized sockets that are 1.75 inches in diameter and once held a mouthful of jagged 5-inch teeth, Titus said. The animal's skull is believed to have been about 4 feet in length.

The creature's jaw shape and the position of its teeth suggest the dinosaur is from a previously unidentified species and could represent a new genus category, he said.

"It is the biggest crocodile fossil ever found in Utah," Titus said. "People have found teeth of crocodiles before, so we knew they were out there, but nothing this big. This is a super-duper fossil."

The fossil was found in an area of the Kaiparowits that had already yielded a new species of horned dinosaurs, a plant-eating hadrosaurs and a birdlike species known as a hagryphus.

At a paleontology lab in Kanab a pair of graduate students who helped Titus remove the fossil have been carefully cleaning it. The fossil is also being stabilized with injections of glue.

Eventually the fossil will be housed at the Utah Museum of Natural History in Salt Lake City.

This story appeared in The Daily Herald on page B7.