Animal profile

West African Dwarf Crocodile

Osteolaemus afzelii

ReptiliaForest streams, swamps and flooded lowland forest

Field profile

The West African dwarf crocodile is the Upper Guinean member of the dwarf crocodile group, small, blunt-snouted and heavily armoured. It was described in 1861, sunk into synonymy, and revived when genetic work in the 2000s showed three distinct lineages within Osteolaemus.

Published field notes

2023-03-27

West African Dwarf Crocodile

One dwarf crocodile turned out to be three

Genetic sampling across Africa found that animals that all looked like a single dwarf crocodile species were three deeply divergent lineages, separated for millions of years. Two nineteenth-century names, long dismissed as synonyms, were brought back to cover them.

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