This enormous predator had jaws powerful enough to subdue massive dinosaur prey. An enormous Cretaceous crocodile relative hunted dinosaurs, ripping them apart using powerful jaws lined with teeth "the size of bananas," researchers say.
Crocodiles
Well, crocodiles share a heritage with dinosaurs as part of a group known as archosaurs (“ruling reptiles”), who date back to the Early Triassic period (250 million years ago). The earliest crocodilian, meanwhile, evolved around 95 million years ago, in the Late Cretaceous period.
The T-Rex would win a fight against the largest crocodile ever. Simply put, the T-Rex is just too large and powerful for the crocodile to kill. Sarcosuchus imperator certainly had a powerful bite, but those 6-inch teeth aren't going to puncture the T-Rex's vital organs or cause it to bleed to death from a single bite.
Alligators & Crocodiles: These sizeable reptiles survived–even though other large reptiles did not. Birds: Birds are the only dinosaurs to survive the mass extinction event 65 million years ago. Frogs & Salamanders: These seemingly delicate amphibians survived the extinction that wiped out larger animals.
Crocodiles relatives are believed to have existed either before dinosaurs or right when dinosaurs first appeared! Crocodile ancestors date back 240 million years to the Triassic period, that's the same era that dinosaurs first began to flourish.
There are two main reasons. First, crocodiles can live for a very long time without food. Second, they lived in places that were the least affected when the asteroid hit Earth.
For approximately 120 million years—from the Carboniferous to the middle Triassic periods—terrestrial life was dominated by the pelycosaurs, archosaurs, and therapsids (the so-called "mammal-like reptiles") that preceded the dinosaurs.
In fact, birds are commonly thought to be the only animals around today that are direct descendants of dinosaurs. So next time you visit a farm, take a moment to think about it. All those squawking chickens are actually the closest living relatives of the most incredible predator the world has ever known!
Surviving crocodiles did not change throughout millions of years because they arrived at an equilibrium where they were efficient and versatile enough that they did not need to evolve to exist, reports the Conversation.
Today's crocodiles are not holdovers that have gone unchanged since the Jurassic, but are one expression of a great, varied family that's been around for over 235 million years. More than that, crocodiles are still evolving—and faster than they have at other times in their family's scaly history.
The study also revealed that the bite forces of the largest extinct crocodilians exceeded 23,000 pounds, a force two-times greater than the mighty Tyrannosaurus rex.
A hippo would win a fight against a crocodile. Although crocodiles are large, powerful creatures, they cannot kill a fully grown hippo. Hippos are large, roundish animals that are much taller than crocodiles. The only place they would be vulnerable to attack is their legs.
A crocodile would beat an anaconda in a fight. A fully grown crocodile is simply too big and strong for an anaconda to kill. Even in an ambush situation, the anaconda would struggle to wrap enough of its body around the crocodile to inhibit its movement and crush it.
Crocodiles have cold blood
Neither of these factors was efficient during the cold and dark conditions following the Yucatan meteor impact. Crocodiles have cold-blooded metabolisms, which means they were able to live for long periods of time in severe darkness, cold, and with very little food.
Fossil records suggest that at one point in history, there were more than 3,000 types of sharks and their relatives. Sharks managed to survive during extinction events when the ocean lost its oxygen – including the die off during the Cretaceous period, when many other large species were wiped out.
Sixty-six-million years ago, a nearly nine-mile-wide asteroid collided with Earth, sparking a mass extinction that wiped out most dinosaurs and three-quarters of the planet's plant and animal species. Now we're learning that the Chicxulub asteroid also generated a massive “megatsunami” with waves more than a mile high.
Genetic studies have demonstrated that humans are still evolving. To investigate which genes are undergoing natural selection, researchers looked into the data produced by the International HapMap Project and the 1000 Genomes Project.
The crocodile's immune system is much more powerful than that of humans, preventing life-threatening infections after savage territorial fights which often leave the animals with gaping wounds and missing limbs.
Unlike many other animals on this planet, crocodiles and alligators have no finite life span. Instead, they continue to live and grow unless affected by their environment through a lack of food, disease, accidents, or another large predator. Instead of aging biologically, alligators continue to simply grow in size.
Other than birds, however, there is no scientific evidence that any dinosaurs, such as Tyrannosaurus, Velociraptor, Apatosaurus, Stegosaurus, or Triceratops, are still alive. These, and all other non-avian dinosaurs became extinct at least 65 million years ago at the end of the Cretaceous Period.
Variables such as temperature, food sources, and oxygen levels are all factors that might impact dinosaur survival. Because dinosaurs lived in much warmer climates millions of years ago, many experts doubt they could even survive today.
Leptocyon was the first true canine (that is, it belonged to the caninae subfamily of the Canidae family), but a small and unobtrusive one, not much bigger than Hesperocyon itself.
There are later descriptions of creatures in the Bible that could be referring to dinosaurs. One example is the behemoth of Job 40:15-19. Even in fairly modern history there are reports of creatures which seem to fit the description of dinosaurs.
In the last half-billion years, life on Earth has been nearly wiped out five times—by such things as climate change, an intense ice age, volcanoes, and that space rock that smashed into the Gulf of Mexico 65 million years ago, obliterating the dinosaurs and a bunch of other species.
Answer and Explanation: Humans survived the mass extinction event that killed the dinosaurs simply by not being there. The extinction of the dinosaurs occurred around 65 million years ago but humans did not evolve until quite recently.