Orange cave crocodiles may be mutating into new species

In 2008 an archaeologist discovered crocodiles living in remote caves in Gabon. Now, genetics hint that these weird cave crocodilians may be in the process of evolving into a new species. It sounds like something out of a children's book: it's orange, it dwells in a cave and it lives on bats and crickets. But this isn't some fairy story about a lonely troll - it's the much weirder tale of a group of African dwarf crocodiles that are adapting to life in pitch-darkness. "We could say that we have a mutating species, because [the cave crocodile] already has a different [genetic] haplotype," said Richard Oslisly, who first discovered the cave crocs in 2008. "Its diet is different and it is a species that has adapted to the underground world." Continue reading...