Thursday, November 19, 2009

If a Crocodile and an Entelodont Had a Baby...


It might look something like Kaprosuchus saharicus, one of five new crocodilians described in a new paper by Sereno & Larsson. I heard about a few of these beasties at SVP, but they had very informal names: "DuckCroc," "BoarCroc," "DogCroc," etc. We've all heard about Anatosuchus before, but it gets a full description in this paper. Cretaceous Africa really saw some bizarre creatures: dinosaurs that were converging on gharials, giant big-nosed crocodiles that ate dinosaurs, and now these buggers, at least one of whom I can see chewing on smaller dinosaurs. National Geographic also has some life restorations, though I can't speak to their quality.

4 comments:

Will Baird said...

That's another wannabe gorgonopsid. :P

Tor Bertin said...

I'm glad that its informal name was converted for its formal name. 'Boar Croc' for a creature like that is perfect.

Anonymous said...

Sereno called them BoarCroc, DogCroc, and the like in order to interest the layman (read: children) in paleontology. Its rather heartwarming, all in all.

Will Baird said...

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