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THURSDAY
SuperCroc made me a better man. No shit. I’m still not sure how he managed my transformation, ’cause, you know, he’s a Mesozoic Era reptile skeleton and I’m an amazingly shallow guy. But SuperCroc (pictured), aka Sarcosuchus, a 40-foot prehistoric crocodile (think a Metrobus with lotsa really sharp teeth—coool) reassembled for jaw-dropping display at the National Geographic headquarters, allowed me to see the error of my bachelor ways. Now I don’t wanna get all mushy and stuff, so I’ll just say I took a special ex-someone to meet SuperCroc, and from that point on, things have just made sense. But enough about my sappy existence: Hungry and lurking in the deep, murky waters of what’s now the Tenere desert, this scaly badass behemoth ruled some 110 million years ago and successfully battled such fellow predators as the raptoresque leviathan Suchomimus. (Ha! No cool nickname for that guy.) Despite his awe-inspiring size, SuperCroc pretty much remained a mystery until his bones were discovered relatively recently in the sub-Saharan African region of Gadoufaoua, a hellish locale featuring 125-degree temps and blinding sandstorms. After sifting through some 20 tons of fossils, scientists came to the yowza conclusion that big daddy SuperCroc was almost “twice as long as the largest crocs living today.” SuperCroc has since wandered from his D.C. digs, but if you ever get a chance to see him, do yourself a favor and don’t hesitate. Oh, and tell him I said hello. I owe him one. Christopher Sloan discusses his book about the beast at 11 a.m. Thursday, Nov. 14, at Olsson’s Books & Records, 2111 Wilson Blvd., Arlington. Free. (703) 525-4227. (Sean Daly)