SEPTEMBER 23, 2019
by Pedro L. Godoy, The Conversation
What does the term crocodylian bring to
mind? A big reptile with a chomping jaw?
Crocodylians are the 27 species of crocodiles,
alligators, caimans and gharials that live all over Earth today, except for
in Europe
and Antarctica. There are some smaller species, but these top predators are
usually big, at least 2 meters long. They also share a general shape and
look—for instance, how easily can you tell
an alligator and a crocodile apart?
The fossil record of crocodylians is much
richer, though, with many different forms and body sizes and extraordinary
ecological diversity.
Over their long evolutionary history of
more than 200 million years, crocs experimented with different lifestyles, as
well as various body lengths. But exactly which environmental factors might
have influenced the body sizes of crocs throughout their evolution? And does
the body size of crocs suggest something about past species' extinction?
To investigate, my colleagues and I created a complete map of body
sizes of crocs through time. Body size can reveal a lot about the
biology of extinct animals. Our study was the first to apply some modern
computational methods to understand body size evolution in crocs.
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