Tia Ghose, LiveScience Staff Writer
Date: 26 March 2013 Time: 08:01 PM ET
A massive extinction between the Triassic
and Jurassic eras paved the way for the rise of the crocodiles, new research
suggests.
The researchers, who detail their work
today (March 26) in the journal Biology
Letters, found that although nearly all the crocodile-like archosaurs,
known as pseudosuchia, died off about 201 million years ago, the one lineage that
survived soon diversified to occupy land and sea. The lineage included the
ancestors of all modern crocodiles
and alligators.
"Even though almost all the lineages
except for one was extinct, the remaining survivors still did well in terms of
morphology and body plans and the whole morphological diversity," said
study co-author Olja Toljagić, an evolutionary biology researcher who was at
the Ludwig Maximilian University of Munich at the time of the study.
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