"He must, so know the starfish and the student biologist who sits at the feet of living things, proliferate in all
directions. Having certain tendencies, he must move along their lines to the limit of their potentialities."

John Steinbeck - Log from the Sea of Cortez

Tuesday, March 9, 2010

Ancient crocs...

My vertebrate zoo group and I talked the other day about some of the early crocodilians like Purussasaurus and Sarcosuchus. Thought it might be a fruitful area for some YouTube surfing, and indeed it was.



The National Geographic video is dramatic enough, but it's a little speculative and doesn't provide much in the way of biological background. There's a little more of that available here.

I saw a lecture by Paul Sereno a few years ago prior to one of his African expeditions, not long before his Science paper on Sarcosuchus. The Sahara has proven to be a very fruitful hunting ground for Cretaceous crocodilians. They're great, but I'm a little partial to Deinosuchus - a fellow southerner.

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