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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.
[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 ...
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 .
The gharial (Gavialis gangeticus), also known as gavial or fish-eating crocodile, is a crocodilian in the family Gavialidae and among the longest of all living crocodilians. . Mature females are 2.6 to 4.5 m (8 ft 6 in to 14 ft 9 in) long, and males 3 to 6 m (9 ft 10 in to 19 ft 8
After the turmoil of the English Civil War, the Royal Society wanted to show that science did not threaten religious and political stability. John Ray developed an influential natural theology of rational order; in his taxonomy , species were static and fixed, their adaptation and complexity designed by God, and varieties showed minor ...
The findings are that second-order predation is more consistent with extinction than is overkill [169] [170] (results graph at left). The Pleistocene extinction model is the only test of multiple hypotheses and is the only model to specifically test combination hypotheses by artificially introducing sufficient climate change to cause extinction.