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A living fossil is a deprecated term for an extant taxon that phenotypically resembles related species known only from the fossil record. To be considered a living fossil, the fossil species must be old relative to the time of origin of the extant clade. Living fossils commonly are of species-poor lineages, but they need not be.
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.
Compared to crocodiles, alligators digest more carbohydrates relative to protein. [107] Crocodilians have a very low metabolic rate and thus low energy requirements. They can withstand extended fasting by living on stored fat. Even recently hatched crocodiles are able to survive 58 days without food, losing 23% of their bodyweight during this ...
Historically, all known living and extinct crocodiles were indiscriminately lumped into the order Crocodilia. However, beginning in the late 1980s, many scientists began restricting the order Crocodilia to the living species and close extinct relatives such as Mekosuchus .
Crocodiles (family Crocodylidae) or true crocodiles are large, semiaquatic reptiles that live throughout the tropics in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australia.The term “crocodile” is sometimes used more loosely to include all extant members of the order Crocodilia, which includes the alligators and caimans (both members of the family Alligatoridae), the gharial and false gharial (both ...
The researchers identified a series of 9-inch-long prints as belonging to an ancient crocodylomorph, a group that includes living crocodilians (alligators, crocodiles, and other similarly-sized ...
Deinosuchus fossils have been discovered in 12 U.S. states, including Texas, Montana, and many along the East Coast. Fossils have also been found in northern Mexico. It lived on both sides of the Western Interior Seaway, and was an opportunistic apex predator in the coastal regions of eastern North America.
Traditionally, crocodiles and alligators were considered more closely related and grouped together in the clade Brevirostres, to the exclusion of the gharials. This classification was based on morphological studies primarily focused on analyzing skeletal traits of living and extinct fossil species. [6]