Sarcosuchus was a giant crocodilian and was a close relative to Deinosuchus . It was much larger than a modern crocodile, ranging around 8 tons. The fossils have been found around in Africa & lived during the Early Cretaceous era. Although it looked much like a crocodile it was something completely different.
Sarcosuchus was a giant relative of crocodiles, with fully grown individuals estimated to have reached up to 9 to 9.5 m (29.5 to 31.2 ft) in total length and 3.5 to 4.3 metric tons (3.9 to 4.7 short tons) in weight. It had somewhat telescoped eyes and a long snout comprising 75% of the length of the skull.
Despite its large size, the overall appearance of Deinosuchus was not considerably different from that of modern crocodilians. Deinosuchus had an alligator-like, broad snout, with a slightly bulbous tip.
Dinosaurs had many shared characteristics with alligators, including being cold-blooded, egg-laying, and having a similar skull shape. Both dinosaurs and alligators are reptiles. Because dinosaurs are extinct by definition, we know them only from fossils.
Brachychampsa had short teeth and a large mouth that packed more power than those of living gators. These oral characteristics suggest that Brachychampsa may have preyed on turtles, which were very common in the Hell Creek fauna. The first alligator ancestors evolved some 245 million years ago.
Modern crocodiles and alligators are almost unchanged from their ancient ancestors of the Cretaceous period (about 145–66 million years ago). That means that animals that were almost identical to the ones you can see today existed alongside dinosaurs!
Have you ever wondered what the largest crocodile ever was? Based on fossil evidence, the longest crocodile ever to live was a Sarcosuchus imperator, who measured 40 feet long and weighed 17,600 pounds.
In an evolutionary sense, birds are a living group of dinosaurs because they descended from the common ancestor of all dinosaurs. Other than birds, however, there is no scientific evidence that any dinosaurs, such as Tyrannosaurus, Velociraptor, Apatosaurus, Stegosaurus, or Triceratops, are still alive.
The adaptations resemble those of early whales and today's hippopotamus, and make Spinosaurus the only dinosaur known to swim, the researchers say.
T. rex's collagen proved to be most similar to chickens and ostriches; its next closest match was to alligators. Chickens and ostriches are only distantly related to each other, so the research says little about what kind of birds might be the closest relatives of the famous carnivore.
“Large carnivores today, most of them are mammals, and roars are the sounds they produce,” says paleontologist, Julia Clarke. “But when we think about T. rex, this is an animal most closely related to birds and alligators and crocodiles, and those animals make very different kinds of sounds.”
During the middle Mesozoic Era, called the Jurassic Period, some dinosaurs evolved into new species, including birds and crocodiles. This period began about 200 million years ago. The earliest crocs were small, terrestrial, two-legged sprinters, and many were vegetarian.
It took a while to figure out what a mosasaur actually was
In the decades that followed, it was described as a giant crocodile and even a sperm whale.
They lived more than 140 million years ago, but until now, it was thought that they made their homes only in the north. The newly analyzed fossil, found in Victoria, establishes that these dinosaurs ranged across much of the globe during the early Cretaceous period that spanned 146 million to 140 million years ago.
Are they dinosaurs? Well, gharials (Gavialis gangeticus) are none of these things. Gharials are most closely related to crocodiles, as are their closest relatives, false or Malayan gharials (Tomistoma schlegelii).
†Deinocheirus mirificus
The arms were among the largest of any bipedal dinosaur at 2.4 m (7.9 ft) long, with large, blunt claws on its three-fingered hands. The legs were relatively short, and bore blunt claws. Its vertebrae had tall neural spines that formed a "sail" along its back.
Pterosaurs are the earliest vertebrates known to have evolved powered flight. Their wings were formed by a membrane of skin, muscle, and other tissues stretching from the ankles to a dramatically lengthened fourth finger.
When they weren't chasing down prey or scavenging for food, new evidence suggests that Tyrannosaurus Rex went for lengthy dips. Researchers believe the tiny- armed carnivores were surprisingly adept swimmers!
an imaginary, human-shaped theropod invented during the early 1980s by palaeontologist Dale Russell and artist and model-maker Ron Séguin. The dinosauroid was first outed in print in 1982 (Russell & Séguin 1982) and a vast amount has been written about it.
Today's birds are the last of the dinosaurs, descendents of ancestors that didn't just survive this mass extinction, but evolutionarily exploded into thousands of species distributed around the world.
While all birds are descended from dinosaurs, the mysterious cassowary is thought to be more similar to ancient dinosaurs than most other birds. Large bodied with fierce claws, these flightless birds also have casques, a helmet-like structure atop the head, which many dinosaurs are believed to have had.
Nigersaurus had a delicate skull and an extremely wide mouth lined with teeth especially adapted for browsing plants close to the ground. This bizarre, long-necked dinosaur is characterized by its unusually broad, straight-edged muzzle tipped with more than 500 replaceable teeth.
Cassius, the 5.48m giant holds the Guinness World Record for being the largest croc currently in captivity. Housed on Green Island in Far North Queensland, he weighs more than one tonne and is believed to be more than 110 years old. The world record was previously held by Lolong in the Philippines.
The largest species of crocodilian in the world is the estuarine or saltwater crocodile (Crocodylus porosus), which ranges throughout the tropical regions of Asia and the Pacific, including the northern coast of Australia.
It was about 2 to 2.5 meters in length. It dates back to the Cretaceous period. Broken refers to the crocodile being found in a massive, shattered boulder. Early neutron imaging scans detected bones that belong to the small chicken-sized juvenile dinosaur.