Video: How did this crocodile get so huge?!

Australian parks and wildlife rangers captured a monster of a crocodile Monday (July 9), according to The Sydney Morning Herald. The beast was 15 feet 5 inches long (4.7 meters) and weighed a whopping 1,300 lbs. (600 kilograms).

If a reptile long enough to block two lanes of traffic sounds big to you, you've got good instincts. Experts told Live Science that this Australian saltwater crocodile (a "salty" in Aussie parlance) was unusually large, even for its hefty species — though it wasn't the biggest size crocodiles like this can reach.

"This animal was very large, but saltwater crocodiles can actually get much bigger," said Stephanie Drumheller-Horton, a paleontologist at the University of Tennessee, Knoxville, and a reptile expert.

"Lolong, a saltwater crocodile from the Philippines, was 6.17 m [20 feet 3 inches] long and holds the Guinness World Record for the largest crocodile ever captured. Other than Lolong, there are records of a saltwater crocodile skin from Papua New Guinea which was 6.2 m [20 feet 4 inches] in length. And, of course, there are always rumors of even bigger animals in the wild."

Via Livescience