Judging by the size of its single, partial fossilized snout, Aegisuchus may have rivaled Sarcosuchus in size, full-grown adults measuring at least 50 feet from head to tail (and possibly as much as 70 feet, depending on whose estimates you rely on). Fed on fish, shell fish, and land creatures.

The Sebecosuchia, which existed from the Late Cretaceous (99.6 million–65.5 million years ago) to the Miocene Epoch (23 million–5.3 million years ago), possess skulls with flattened sides, and the choanae lie in a depression in the anterior part of the pterygoids. There was still room for innovation, though: for example, paleontologists believe that Stomatosuchus subsisted on plankton and krill, like a modern grey whale. The families and genera of the order Crocodylia are differentiated primarily by the... Annotated classification. Dmitry Bogdanov/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY 3.0. Few things in natural history are as obscure as the difference between crocodiles and alligators; suffice it to say that modern alligators (technically a sub-family of crocodiles) are restricted to North America, and are characterized by their blunter snouts. The crocodile form, on the other hand, reappeared quite shortly after the Triassic-Jura border in relation to the overall time frame, and again developed into numerous semi-aquatic genera and species at the transition between land and water. Today, Rhamphosuchus' place in the spotlight has been usurped by truly gigantic prehistoric crocodiles like Sarcosuchus and Deinosuchus, and this genus has faded into relative obscurity.

The largest known species, the Machimosaurus hugii, with a length of up to 12 meters, probably hunted for fish and turtles in the ocean as well as for large land animals on the shore, according to expert reconstructions, and its anatomy has far-reaching parallels with today's Saltwater Crocodiles.

The families and genera of the order Crocodylia are differentiated primarily by the anatomical peculiarities of their skulls.

The age of the species, as well as its ancestry, is rather murky because - as with most animal species - there are not enough fossil traces for such long-term empirical surveys.

Genome sequences for the American alligator, saltwater crocodile, and Indian gharial—representatives of all three extant crocodilian families—were obtained to facilitate better understanding of the unique biology of this group and provide a context for studying avian genome evolution. Thus, often without knowing the overall history of the crocodile form, their stability is determined alone by the ”survival” of the violent geological and climatic faults at the end of the Cretaceous period, 66 million years ago. Frank Vincentz/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0.

Kuebi/Armin Kübelbeck/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0. Bob Strauss is a science writer and the author of several books, including "The Big Book of What, How and Why" and "A Field Guide to the Dinosaurs of North America. Sometimes there are such strong similarities that practically unrelated species can hardly be distinguished, at least by a layman.

There is much to suggest that they largely disappeared. Prehistoric crocodiles weren't necessarily restricted to river environments; the fact is that these ancient reptiles could be every bit as diverse as their dinosaur cousins when it came to their habitats and lifestyles.

7, Nr. In the following explanations, I will assign all such reptiles which strongly resemble today's crocodilians to the "crocodile form" (note: this is independent of the taxonomic term cocodilforms). The best known of those representatives of the crocodile form, which already existed well over 200 million years ago in the geological Triassic epoch (252.2 - 201.3 million years), belonged to the Phytosauria.
Simosuchus didn't look much like a crocodile, given its short, blunt head and vegetarian diet, but anatomical evidence points to its having been a distant crocodile ancestor of late Cretaceous Madagascar.

This scheme also contains a suborder, Thalattosuchia.

To show how little the experts agree, Pholidosaurus has been adduced as a close relative of both Thalattosaurus, an obscure marine reptile of the Triassic period, and Sarcosuchus, the largest crocodile that ever lived!
Ate plankton and krill even though they had a hugh pelican like jaw. Still, since soft tissue doesn't preserve well in the fossil record, Notosuchus' pig-like proboscis is far from a done deal! The early members of this family had yet to become our current species of crocodile on Earth today.

Here, however, there are some further clarifications needed regarding frequent errors, which sometimes even reach into paleontological circles. That's certainly the case with crocodiles, which can trace their lineage back 200 million years to Erpetosuchus, a tiny, foot-long archosaur that prowled the swamps of North America and Europe during the late Triassic and early Jurassic periods. I also never realized how big crocodiles are. [6] Molnar, R. E. (1979). They had a 6ft.

Described in 2003 by the ubiquitous American paleontologist Paul Sereno, Anatosuchus probably kept well out of the way of the larger megafauna of its day, rousting small insects and crustaceans from the soil with its sensitive "bill.". [5] Willis, P. M. A.

long skull. There is definitely no other proven form of life that has even come close to achieving such enormous stability at the top of the food pyramid, at the transition from water to land. Nobu Tamura/Wikimedia Commons/CC BY-SA 3.0. In the subsequent Jura (201.3 - 145 million years) and Cretaceous (145 - 66 million years) epochs, the ecological niches freed up in this way were occupied slowly, for example by the, initially, still rather small dinosaurs. The unbelievably long Success Story of the Crocodile Form over a Quarter of a Billion Years. The purpose of this simplification is not a trick, to cheat the verification. doi:10.1671/0272-4634(2002)022[0593:CVANCF]2.0.CO;2

Still, the head of this ancient reptile was somewhat comical by prehistoric standards, looking a bit like a pig's snout pasted onto a grumpy trout. andThe crocodiles continuously get smaller because of environment changes. http://t3.gstatic.com/images?q=tbn:ANd9GcRgGpvU-T90I9hMaiUGfp_ZPgov7YjZ59krdUumNsuPcr60D8pyyw, http://www.palaeocritti.com/_/rsrc/1265511132370/by-group/crocodylomorpha/erpetosuchus/Erpetosuchus_sk.jpg, http://theevolutionstore.com/modules/store/images/products/sarcosuchus_imperator_supercroc_skull_ss1825_m5364.jpg.

Cannibalism and social exclusion are thought to greatly affect population dynamics and regulate population growth.


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