Largest crocodile ever recorded? Would you believe the largest saltwater crocodile ever reported was 10.1 m (33.1 feet)? This animal was apparently killed in the Bay of Bengal, and was so large only its head was recovered. A skull reportedly belonging to this animal was stored in the British Museum, but when it was measured later it was estimated to have come from a 15.7 ft (4.8 m) crocodile - less than half the claimed length. The skull of another claimed 29 ft (8.8 m) monster was also later determined to belong to a crocodile no larger than 16.2 ft (4.9 m). These are still big crocodiles, but typical of the exaggeration normally associated with large crocodiles. Still, some of these stories seem more credible. Saltwater crocodiles above 6 m (19.7 feet) were certainly much more common in Australia and SE Asia before extensive hunting for their skins in the 1940's, 50's and 60's wiped out the big crocodiles. Some old hunters claim to have shot animals over 8 m (26 feet) during this period (e.g. a 27 ft [8.1 m] saltwater crocodile from the Staaton River in Queensland in the early 1970's). But without reliable measurements, such records are lost to the past.
In the Internet age, a new class of "big fish" stories is starting to appear - photographs of crocodiles manipulated digitally to make the animal look much larger that it is. Such tricks are hardly new, and there are dozen of classic "giant crocodile" photographs taken in such a way as to trick the eye into exaggerating the crocodile's size. There's simply no substitute for a measurement taken using a straight tape measure between the tip of the nose and the end of the tail, preferably backed up by reliable witnesses.
So what is the largest crocodile ever recorded? In more recent times, there are very few reliable measurements of extremely large crocodiles, but they do exist. A skull from a saltwater crocodile from Orissa, India, was large enough to have come from a crocodile between 20 and 23 feet in length. Despite being the largest crocodile skull in the world, the true size of its original owner remains a mystery, because although you can estimate total length from skull size, there is enough variation to make such a measurement fairly inaccurate. As far as I can determine, the following are the only two reliable records from &complete& crocodiles over 20 feet in length. The first was a 20.3 foot (6.2 m) saltwater crocodile that became entangled in a fishing net set on the Mary River in the Northern Territory of Australia in 1974. The owners of the net killed the crocodile with an axe and removed the head, but it was eventually discovered by wildlife rangers and the separate head and body measured. The skull is on display at the Darwin Crocodile Farm, and still spots the axe marks that killed it. The second crocodile was also 20.3 feet (6.2 m) long, and was killed by local villagers living on the Fly River in Papua New Guinea in 1983. In this case, it was actually the skin that was measured by several zoologists including Jerome Montague and Rom Whitaker. Because skins are known to underestimate the original size of the actual animal, they concluded that the crocodile was at least another 10 cm / 3.9 inches longer. This is my candidate for the largest crocodile ever measured. Unfortunately, because of the time needed for wild crocodiles to reach this size, the low number of individuals which seem predisposed to reach such sizes, and problems of crocodiles conflicting with expanding human populations, it seems unlikely that we will see many of these giants again.
(No I didn't sit and type all that, I stole, oops, I mean cut and paste from
http://www.flmnh.ufl.edu/cnhc/cbd-faq-q2.htm)
