The crocodile (scientific name: Deinosuchus) is about 10 meters long. It is an extinct large crocodile belonging to the alligator superfamily , which lived on the eastern coast of North America during the late Cretaceous period. The genus name of the crocodile means "terrifying giant crocodile" in Greek, and the crocodile is one of the largest crocodiles in history, feeding on small dinosaurs. The fossils of crocodiles found so far are mainly skulls, but there are also leg bones and vertebrae.
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Over the past few hundred million years, a wide variety of beasts of prey have appeared on Earth. They used to stand at the top of the food chain and dominate one side. Crocodiles are extinct large crocodiles belonging to the alligator superfamily. It lived on the eastern coast of North America during the late Cretaceous period. Crocodiles are one of the largest types of crocodiles ever seen in history, and have been called "terrifying crocodiles" by paleontologists. Many large animals of the late Cretaceous period, including dinosaurs, were its food.
Crocodiles lived about 75 million years ago. When archaeologists first found fossils of the crocodile, they thought it was some kind of theropod dinosaur, but after studying it, it was found that it should be a prehistoric crocodile.
Since the fossils of crocodiles that have been found are quite fragmented, biologists are more controversial about the length of crocodiles. In 1954, biologist Ned Colbert estimated the crocodile's length to be 15 meters based on the fossil length of the crocodile's jaw of about 2 meters. But later, other biologists disagreed, believing that the crocodile should be about 12 meters long and weigh about 7 tons. But even at this size, it is still significantly larger than any existing crocodile.
The fastest speed for modern crocodiles to run on land is 17 km / h, but the crocodile's mobility on land is much worse than that of modern crocodiles, so crocodiles rarely hunt on land.
Crocodiles are often thought to hunt in a similar way to modern crocodiles: immersing their bodies in water and attacking dinosaurs or other land animals that approach shore. Running and swimming are not the crocodile's strong points, but it is particularly good at launching surprise attacks, and it is very fast, and prey within five meters of its body is generally difficult to escape. Scientists have found fossils of several duck-billed dragon tail vertebrae near the Great Bend National Park in Texas, USA, with crocodile tooth marks, which shows that crocodiles can hunt dinosaurs on the shore.
In 2005, Farlow was in Femoral Dimensions and Body Size of Alligator mississippiensis: Estimating the Size of Extinct Mesoeucrocodylians, by James O. Farlow, Grant R. Hurlburt, Ruth M. Elsey, Adam R. C. Britton and Wann Langston, Jr. © 2005 (Estimating extinct crocodiles based on the leg bones of the Mississippi bottlenose crocodile)] presented new estimates.
Based on the length, width and circumference of the leg bones of the Mississippi crocodile, the prehistoric crocodile was also estimated, and the Western Crocodile and the African Monarch Muscle Crocodile were also among them, and the results showed that the crocodile's speculation based on the leg bone was much smaller than the data speculated on the skull.
Farlow now considers the largest crocodile to be 8 tons. But Farlow's research showed that the bones of the crocodile's legs were quite weak relative to its size, even lower than that of the monarch muscle crocodile, and were likely to be specialized and adapted to aquatic crocodiles.
Although the latest estimates of the length of the crocodile are quite low, even these values are still significantly larger than any existing crocodile. Crocodiles are considered to be one of the largest crocodiles in history. Other prehistoric giant crocodiles include the monarch crocodile species of the african muscle crocodile in the middle and late Cretaceous period, the Brazilian species of the Prussian crocodile in Mesocene Brazil, the origma crocodile in Mesocene and Pliocene India, and the thick-beaked long-snout crocodile.
Fossils of crocodiles have been found primarily in many parts of the United States, including Alabama, Mississippi, Montana, Georgia, New Jersey, North Carolina, New Mexico, Texas, Utah, and Wyoming. In 2006, the skin of an alligator was found in northern Mexico, and this time for the first time a crocodile fossil was found outside the United States. Fossils of crocodiles are most commonly found in the Gulf Coast Plains of Georgia, close to the border of Alabama.
According to the fossil distribution of crocodiles, this group of giant crocodiles may have lived in estuarine environments. Some crocodile fossils were found in marine sediments, but it is possible that crocodiles entered the ocean in search of food, as is the case with the Bay crocodile today. In the Aguja Formation, some crocodiles may have lived in salt marshes or tidal zones, and the largest crocodile fossils have been found in the area.
The Alberta dinosaur, which cohabited with crocodiles, was a theropod dinosaur 9-10 meters long, probably before the emergence of giant predators such as Tyrannosaurus rex, when the top of the food chain on land was likely to clash with crocodiles.
In 1954, Ned Colbert and Roland Bird first proposed that crocodiles were likely to feed on dinosaurs that lived in the same region. Ned Colbert reiterated this theory again in 1961: "This crocodile should have fed on medium-sized dinosaurs." When crocodiles prey on prey on the shore, they attack the prey on the shore in the water, which is the area where animals of all sizes drink water. ”
Colbert and Bird reconstructed the giant crocodile based on fossil fragments they found in Texas, and they reconstructed the crocodile's skull in plaster based on the living Cuban crocodile. According to today's research, the reconstructed crocodile skull at that time was wrong, and its head to body ratio was also wrong, which led to the inflated body length of the crocodile, but it shocked people's eyes. In the decades since, more crocodile fossils have been found across the United States, and although these fossils are fragmentary, they have increased our understanding of crocodiles. It wasn't until 2002, based on a newly discovered fossil, that David R. Schwimmer used 3D technology to recover 90 percent of the crocodile skulls, and we had a correct understanding of crocodiles.
Crocodiles are generally thought to have adopted a hunting pattern similar to that of today's crocodiles, immersing their bodies in water and attacking dinosaurs or other terrestrial animals approaching the shore until the prey drowns. Several duck-billed dragon tail vertebrae found near Big Bend National Park, with crocodile tooth marks, reinforce the theory that crocodiles would feed on some dinosaurs, but it is also possible that crocodiles eat carrion.
David Swaimer and others have suggested that crocodiles may feed on turtles. Crocodiles may use their blunt teeth at the back of their mouths to crush the shell of a turtle and feed on it. Fossils of the genus Bothremydidae, a suborder of lateral-necked turtles, are often found in the eastern north of North America where fossils of the crocodile's shells have been found, most likely by large crocodiles.
In 2002 , David Swaimer suggested that the diet of alligators may vary depending on the region in which they live. The smaller crocodiles that lived in eastern North America may have a similar niche to today's American crocodiles , with a variety of food sources , such as turtles , large fish , and small dinosaurs. Crocodiles in Texas and Montana are larger and rarer, but even so crocodiles make their living mainly on fish and small animals that drink water on the shore.
The erroneous value of the 15-meter crocodile comes from the error recovery and estimation made by Colbert and Bird based on the Cuban crocodile in 1954. After a correction in 1999, the crocodile's body length dropped to 8 to 10 m and its weight was between 2.5 and 5 tonnes. Accurate estimates are made based on the 1-meter-long skull of the crocodile, which is about 8 meters long and weighs about 2.3 tons. According to a skull from Texas that reached a length of 1.31 meters, the crocodile reached a length of 9.8 meters. The largest known fossil of a crocodile represents an individual that can reach a length of 10 meters and weighs more than 8 tons.
The 10-meter-long crocodile exceeds all the crocodiles that live on Earth today, and the largest accurately measured giant crocodile should be Lolong, a bay crocodile with a body length of 6.17 meters and a weight of more than 1 ton.
The 10-meter crocodile is already very large, but this does not mean that all crocodiles can reach this length. In 1999, the paleontologist George W. Bush Gregory M. Erickson and Christopher M. Christopher A. Brochu proposed that crocodiles should have the same growth rate as crocodiles today, which is a long time. Crocodiles reach adulthood at age 35 and begin to reach old age at age 50, in stark contrast to the rapid growth of dinosaurs, as researchers quipped that "a crocodile must have seen several generations of dinosaurs come and go."
From the above research, it can be deduced that the largest 10-meter-long crocodile is already a very large individual, aged around 100 years old (Cassius raised in Australian zoos is about 110 years old). For the crocodile, only one in an average of 10,000 individuals can reach a size of 12 meters, and behind it are thousands of bones of the same kind. In the growth of crocodiles, they have to face a variety of fierce predators, some of these predators from the sky, some from the land, some from the river or even the sea, all of which can grow up to old age is not easy, there is really a sense of a thousand bones.
Crocodile attacks duckbill dragons, there is a lot of evidence, this evidence includes a duck-billed dragon was attacked by the crocodile after the luck survived, this means that although the crocodile is less capable of moving on land, but can still hunt dinosaurs of equal size with their own body on the shore, the crocodile attacked the duck-billed dragon evidence, round teeth, it is obvious that the crocodile's teeth diagonal crocodile diagonal dragons do not have direct predatory evidence, but many of the same period as the dinosaur dinosaurs are longer, the nose horn defense of the crocodile is more effective than the eyebrow horn of the late Triceratops. It is possible that the giant crocodile diagonal family exerted evolutionary pressure.
In 1940, excavation teams at the American Museum of Natural History unearthed many large crocodile fossils in Great Bend National Park in Texas. In 1954, Ned Colbert and Roland Bird published a study of these fossils, named the Crocodile. In 1979, Donald Baird and Jack Horner discovered that crocodiles are the same species as crocodiles, and crocodiles became synonymous with crocodiles.
When reconstructing the head model, the American Museum of Natural History referenced the head of a Cuban crocodile and reconstructed most of the head using plaster cast. Colbert and Bird thought this version was too conservative, believing that a larger model of the crocodile could be made by reconstructing it with reference to the Bay Crocodile. Since it was unclear whether the crocodile had a wide snout, Colbert and Bird made an error in calculating the proportion of the crocodile's head. Despite errors in the reconstruction, this crocodile head model has become the first impression of the general public on the crocodile.
More crocodile fossils were found, mostly broken fossils, but helped paleontology to do more research on crocodiles. Christopher A. Brochu proposed that the unique shape of the skin of the crocodile is one of the characteristics of the identification of the crocodile. In 2002, David Swaimer constructed a 90 percent complete computer model of the head based on more crocodile fossils. Colbert and Bird classified crocodiles in the family Crocodile family based on their teeth characteristics. According to phylogenetic studies proposed by Gregory Erickson et al. in 1999, alligators are primitive species of the alligator superfamily. Thus, the crocodile is not the largest crocodile, but the largest alligator.
In 1940, a team of excavations from the American Museum of Natural History discovered the fossil of a giant crocodile in Big Bend National Park in Texas, which was only discovered in 1954 by Edwin W. Bush. H. Colbert and Roland Colbert Described by Roland T. Bird. Originally the giant crocodile fossil was named Phobosuchus, Donald Baird and Jack Horner pointed out that it was actually a crocodile. Colbert and Bird reconstructed the giant crocodile based on fossil fragments they found in Texas, and they reconstructed the crocodile's skull in plaster based on the living Cuban crocodile. In the decades since, more crocodile fossils have been found across the United States, and although these fossils are fragmentary, they have increased our understanding of crocodiles. It wasn't until 2002, based on a newly discovered fossil, that David R. Schwimmer used 3D technology to recover 90 percent of the alligator skull.
The erroneous value of the 15-meter crocodile comes from the error recovery and estimation made by Colbert and Bird based on the Cuban crocodile in 1954. After a correction in 1999, the crocodile's body length dropped to 8 to 10 m and its weight was between 2.5 and 5 tonnes. Accurate estimates are made based on the 1-meter-long skull of the crocodile, which is about 8 meters long and weighs about 2.3 tons. According to a skull from Texas that reached a length of 1.31 meters, the crocodile reached a length of 9.8 meters. The largest known fossil of a crocodile represents an individual up to 12 meters long and weighing more than 8 tons.
Comparison of the size of Tyrannosaurus rex and the largest crocodile in foreign papers
From the above research, it can be deduced that the largest 12-meter-long crocodile is already a very large individual, aged about 100 years old (Cassius raised in Australian zoos is about 110 years old). For the crocodile, only one in an average of 10,000 individuals can reach a size of 12 meters, and behind it are thousands of bones of the same kind. In the growth of crocodiles, they have to face a variety of fierce predators, some of these predators from the sky, some from the land, some from the river or even the sea, all of which can grow up to old age is not easy, there is really a sense of a thousand bones.
About the opponent of the crocodile. When it comes to crocodile opponents, everyone will think of Alberta Dragon, because the living areas of the two are overlapping, and they are the two top predators at that time, which can be said to be not a bad family. However, in addition to Alberta dragons, it seems that we have ignored many predators, such as Appalachian dragons, Neptune dragons and so on. Who is stronger? This is almost everyone who reads this question, so let's briefly compare and analyze it. Adult Alberta dragons are 9 meters long, 3.5 meters high, and weigh 4.5 tons, compared with Alberta dragons, crocodiles and Alberta dragons, their elderly individuals are equal, and the crocodile's way of survival is obviously not very dominant. But considering the broader and more practical problems, you will change your opinion, Alberta dragons grow at a much higher rate and survival rate than crocodiles, with 30 out of every 100 Alberta dragons surviving to adulthood, and less than 1 in every 100 crocodiles. Alberta dragons grow rapidly, and when it reaches adulthood (assuming it is 20 years old), the crocodile is still only a teenager (35 years old), that is, before the crocodile reaches adulthood, the Alberta dragon of its age is always larger than itself. Coupled with the fact that Alberta dragons are typical social animals, I think crocodiles will not compete with them. For the overlord Neptune Dragon in another world, the crocodile's advantage is much greater. Although some species of Neptune dragons can reach a length of up to 15 meters, neptunes living in the same era as the crocodiles are about 6 meters in size, which is much larger in comparison. When facing numerous opponents, crocodiles will prefer to crowd out Neptune dragons in shallow seas rather than fight Alberta dragons on land.
It should be noted that crocodiles did not live with tyrannosaurs, and they were extinct 3 million years before the appearance of tyrannosaurs.
Despite its size, the crocodile was not the largest prehistoric crocodile, and its body length was smaller than that of the Prussian crocodile. The latest research shows that alligators belong to the alligator family and are closely related to the Reddy's crocodile.
Crocodiles once dominated one side and hunted on their territory at will. However, the sheer size of the race only led to a brief rise in race and eventually led to their demise. Like all megafauna, crocodiles rely too much on the environment, and once the environment is destroyed, they become extinct. At that time, the climate of North America changed dramatically, the sea receded, the vast lakes shrank, and the crocodile could not find enough food and was forced to disappear.
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