Tet Zoo regulars will remember the detailed montage I’ve produced that hopefully gives some idea of crocodylomorph diversity (Crocodylomorpha = the archosaur clade that includes modern crocodylians and all taxa closer to them than to croc-branch members of Archosauria like the aetosaurs and rauisuchians. Crocodylomorpha is basically equivalent to ‘Crocodilia’ of tradition; most members of [...]

The Tet Zoo crocodile series is not yet finished, and here we embark on part VI in the series (see below for links to previous parts). This time, we come to the Nile crocodile lineage, and I refer here to a ‘lineage’ rather than to a species since there’s now good evidence that C. niloticus [...]

Way back in November 2010 a remarkable photo appeared online, showing an adult Nile crocodile Crocodylus niloticus biting the trunk of an adult female African bush elephant Loxodonta africana (a plague upon those bloggers and others who identified the crocodylian as an… alligator. Duh). You’ve almost certainly seen the photo already: it was widely features [...]

I knocked this up in a hurry yesterday but I think it’s good enough to share publicly. The pristichampsine is meant to be trotting along at speed, and that explains why its hat is falling off. Have a great Christmas and New Year – here’s to 2013. 2012 was a crazy year for me (annual [...]

The Mesozoic was not a ‘dinosaurs-only theme park’. Numerous other tetrapod lineages were around as well, and there was enough ‘ecospace’ for members of at least some of these groups to evolve giant size and macropredatory lifestyles, and even to dominate certain sections of the Mesozoic world. It’s well known in particular that this was [...]

In the previous article we looked at Wealden goniopholidids, focusing in particular on the new taxa named by Steve Salisbury and myself in the review of Wealden crocodyliforms we published last year (Salisbury & Naish 2011). Having gotten some of the relevant taxa out of the way, we now need to crack on and get [...]

Regular readers of Tet Zoo might know that much of my specialised technical research centers around the dinosaurs, pterosaurs and other fossil reptiles of the Wealden Supergroup. What is the Wealden Supergroup? It’s the name given to a series of mudstones, siltstones and sandstones, deposited across the floodplains, lagoons and estuaries of south-eastern England during [...]

I’ve been drawing crocodylomorphs. Lots of them. Crocodylomorpha, as if you need reminding, is the archosaur clade that essentially includes all archosaurs traditionally dubbed ‘crocodilians’: the living crocodiles, alligators and gharials and all their fossil relatives. These animals were hugely diverse in the past, and hopefully you can get some idea of that diversity (by [...]

It’s time to carry on once more with the Tet Zoo crocodile series – for previous parts, see the list of links below. In the previous article we looked at the New Guinea crocodile Crocodylus novaeguineae and Philippine crocodile C. mindorensis, and before that the Saltwater, Indopacific or Estuarine crocodile C. porosus. This last species [...]

It’s time to crack on with the Tet Zoo guide to the crocodiles of the world (part I here, part II here, part III here). I haven’t been able to do much on the blog lately due to technical work on pterosaurs, cats and the whole sexual selection project. Anyway – – in the previous [...]