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RE: UNtame crocs - how can you finish your thesis dodging these guys?
> From: owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu [mailto:owner-DINOSAUR@usc.edu]
> On Behalf Of B tH
>
>
> Amazing animals.
> Were there almost-identical species to the salt-water croc at
> the time just before the KT? What are the odds they could be
> the same genus?
Chris "Master of the Crocodylia" Brochu had an excellent review of the
crown-group crocs in:
http://arjournals.annualreviews.org/doi/abs/10.1146/annurev.earth.31.100901.
141308
In that paper, he shows the fossil record of Indo-Pacific crocs extending
only back the base of the Pliocene, and Crocodylus itself only to the early
Miocene. Taxa like Borealosuchus were present in the latest Maastrichtian:
at a rough glance, they are roughly "Crocodylus"-like (but the devil is in
the details, and they are not closely related phylogenetically to modern
Crocodylus in the larger context of eusuchians).
> By the way, to our Oz friends, why did they name it "alligator" river?
My guess is the same reason that Darwin talked about the "ostrichs" of South
America: refining the common names of various species hadn't occurred during
the 19th Century.
Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Email: tholtz@umd.edu Phone: 301-405-4084
Office: Centreville 1216
Senior Lecturer, Vertebrate Paleontology
Dept. of Geology, University of Maryland
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~tholtz/
Fax: 301-314-9661
Faculty Director, Earth, Life & Time Program, College Park Scholars
http://www.geol.umd.edu/~jmerck/eltsite/
Faculty Director, Science & Global Change Program, College Park Scholars
http://www.geol.umd.edu/sgc
Fax: 301-314-9843
Mailing Address: Thomas R. Holtz, Jr.
Department of Geology
Building 237, Room 1117
University of Maryland
College Park, MD 20742 USA