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Sarcosuchus (/ ˌ s ɑːr k oʊ ˈ s uː k ə s /; lit. ' flesh crocodile ' ) is an extinct genus of crocodyliform and distant relative of living crocodilians that lived during the Early Cretaceous , from the late Hauterivian to the early Albian , 133 to 112 million years ago of what is now Africa and South America .
Crocodylomorpha is a group of pseudosuchian archosaurs that includes the crocodilians and their extinct relatives. They were the only members of Pseudosuchia to survive the end-Triassic extinction. Extinct crocodylomorphs were considerably more ecologically diverse than modern crocodillians.
The name Pseudosuchia was originally given to a group of superficially crocodile-like prehistoric reptiles from the Triassic period, but fell out of use in the late 20th century, especially after the name Crurotarsi was established in 1990 to label the clade (evolutionary grouping) of archosaurs encompassing most reptiles previously identified as pseudosuchians.
The traditional group "Crocodylia" was replaced by the name Crocodyliformes, defined to include many of the extinct families that the new definition left out. Clark did not initially provide an exact definition for Crocodyliformes; but, in 2001, Paul Sereno and colleagues defined it as the clade including Protosuchus richardsoni and the Nile ...
The reasons Paraceratherium and its relatives became extinct after surviving for about 11 million years are unknown, but it is unlikely that there was a single cause. Theories include that their large size was related to the now outdated concept of inadaptive evolution , climate change , vegetational change, and low reproduction rate .
[47] [48] Brain expansion (enlargement) between 0.8 and 0.2 Ma may have occurred due to the extinction of most African megafauna (which made humans feed from smaller prey and plants, which required greater intelligence due to greater speed of the former and uncertainty about whether the latter were poisonous or not), extreme climate variability ...
Reduction of grasslands after the end of the Last Glacial Period, and possibly hunting. [64] 4855-4733 BC: North African horse: Equus algericus: Maghreb: Aridification. [29] 4840-4690 BC: Majorcan giant dormouse: Hypnomys morpheus: Mallorca, Spain Possibly disease spread by introduced rodents. [65] 4765-4445 BC [59] [66] Club-tailed glyptodont ...
Fossils from before the mass extinction have only been found around the Equator, but after the event fossils can be found all over the world. [13] Suggested explanations for this include: Archosaurs made more rapid progress towards erect limbs than synapsids, and this gave them greater stamina by avoiding Carrier's constraint .