Crocodiles are considered “living fossils, because they have not changed since the dinosaur time. However, scientists from the Central Oklahoma University and Utah University proved that this was not the case. Researchers have found that evolution for more than 230 million years has not only survived the ancestors of modern crocodiles, but also actively adapted their lifestyles, diets and environment by changing their environment. Published in İş Magazine Paleontology.
Crocodiles are representatives of the former crocodile group surviving two mass destruction: at the beginning of Trias and Jurassic periods and at the end of Cretace, when the dinosaurs disappeared from the Earth. As scientists believed, the key to survival was incredible flexibility – the ability to eat various foods and adapt to different environmental conditions.
“Many groups close to crocodiles were much more and diversity, but disappeared. And these several stations were able to remain and developed,” he said.
As a rule, today’s crocodiles are semi -water predators living in rivers, swamps and lakes. However, the ancestors of these reptiles mastered with various ecological niches. Among the old crocodiles were both specialized water predators and land -like omnivor and even herbivores. After the destruction of the tria, it was a flexible diet that managed to survive, the station wagon, expert predators disappeared.
In order to find the diet of the old crocodiles, scientists explored 99 descendants and the skulls and dental form of 20 modern species and compared them to 136 representatives of other animals from mammals to lizards. This made it possible to recreate the evolutionary picture of food for 230 million years.
According to researchers, understanding which features help animals to get rid of the catastrophes of the past may say who can survive in a modern environmental crisis conditions. Today, the crocodiles face threats that millions of years have not faced: hunting, habitat destruction, climate changes. However, the old versatility can play in their hands.
Randy, Randy Irmis’s work, “In the crocodiles, instead of seeing skin for dangerous predators or bags, instead of seeing the most severe creatures that survive the most severe times in the history of planet,” he said. “If we protect your habitats, they have a chance to survive and have a chance to extinate the sixth extinction.”
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Source: Gazeta
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