I'm more interested in the pseudo-suchian angle though at the moment. People seem to think of crocs a lot like sharks - at some point, many millions of years ago, a croc popped into existence and they have stayed much the same ever since. We also have a lot of news about dinosaurs and their seagoing or aerial relatives.
But the Crocs are fascinating. Some were just plain huge, like sarcosuchus, but there was masses of variety. They exhibited all sorts of convergent-evolutionary forms.
There were dog-sized crocs with long legs, bipedal crocs, there were 5m long sea-crocs with tail-flukes that filled the same niches as icthyosaurs or dolphins... almost all of them are total nightmare-fuel.
I'm more interested in the pseudo-suchian angle though at the moment. People seem to think of crocs a lot like sharks - at some point, many millions of years ago, a croc popped into existence and they have stayed much the same ever since. We also have a lot of news about dinosaurs and their seagoing or aerial relatives.
But the Crocs are fascinating. Some were just plain huge, like sarcosuchus, but there was masses of variety. They exhibited all sorts of convergent-evolutionary forms.
There were dog-sized crocs with long legs, bipedal crocs, there were 5m long sea-crocs with tail-flukes that filled the same niches as icthyosaurs or dolphins... almost all of them are total nightmare-fuel.
I want to know more about these!