An American crocodile killed in pre-dawn traffic in the Florida Keys may have been looking for a nest.
The Miami Herald reports the female croc was run over by a tractor-trailer last week.
The driver told the Florida Highway Patrol that he couldn't avoid the 8-foot-long reptile when it walked into the path of the truck.
American crocodiles nearly became extinct by the mid-1970s when only a handful of breeding females - all in the Keys - were known to exist.
Habitat conservation on North Key Largo and the Everglades, along with endangered-species protection, helped the crocodile population recover to current estimates of about 2,000 adults. In 2007, the American crocodile's protected status was changed to "threatened."
