The Evolution of Crocodiles
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the extraordinary variety of the animals that dominated life on land before the dinosaurs and why crocodiles should never be called 'living fossils'.
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable diversity of the animals that dominated life on land in the Triassic, before the rise of the dinosaurs in the Jurassic, and whose descendants are often described wrongly as 'living fossils'. For tens of millions of years, the ancestors of alligators and Nile crocodiles included some as large as a bus, some running on two legs like a T Rex and some that lived like whales. They survived and rebounded from a series of extinction events but, while the range of habitats of the dinosaur descendants such as birds covers much of the globe, those of the crocodiles have contracted, even if the animals themselves continue to evolve today as quickly as they ever have.
With
Anjali Goswami
Research Leader in Life Sciences and Dean of Postgraduate Education at the Natural History Museum
Philip Mannion
Lecturer in the Department of Earth Sciences at University College London
And
Steve Brusatte
Professor of Palaeontology and Evolution at the University of Edinburgh
Producer Simon Tillotson
Last on
LINKS AND FURTHER READING
Steve Brusatte at the University of Edinburgh
Philip Mannion at University College London
Anjali Goswami at the Natural History Museum
READING LIST
Steve Brusatte, The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World (Picador, 2018)
Stephen L. Brusatte, Dinosaur Paleobiology (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012)
Anjali Goswami and Anthony Friscia (eds.), Carnivoran Evolution: New Views on Phylogeny, Form and Function (Cambridge University Press, 2010)
RELATED LINKS
Climate change created today’s large crocodiles – The Conversation (Sept 2019)
Evolution: Much on the Menu for Ancient Crocs – Current Biology (July 2019)
Ecological opportunity and the rise and fall of crocodylomorph evolutionary innovation – Royal Society Publishing (March 2021)
Climate constrains the evolutionary history and biodiversity of crocodylians – Nature Communications (Sept 2015)
The first crocodile ancestors – PLOS Blog (August 2016)
Awesome sea-going crocodyliforms of the Mesozoic – Scientific American (October 2012)
Inner ears give a unique insight into ancient crocodile relatives – Ecology and Evolution (May 2020)
Why Crocodiles Are Not Just Living Fossils – New York Times
Evolutionary structure and timing of major habitat shifts in Crocodylomorpha – Scientific Reports (2019)
Crocodylomorph Disparity – Palaeocast Podcast
Broadcasts
- Thu 16 Sep 2021 09:00BBC Radio 4
- Thu 16 Sep 2021 21:30BBC Radio 4
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