The Crocodile that ate Dinosaurs: classification

Sarcosuchus is not an ancestor of today's crocodiles, and in fact is not a crocodiliano in phylogenetic definition. A crocodiliano is any member of the clade Crocodilia. Crocodilia includes all modern forms such as crocodiles themselves, alligators, etc., and their immediate prehistoric relatives. Sarcosuchus is a member of the family pholidosauridae more distantly related com crocodilians."Crocodile" is a term often used in a much broader sense.

The first crocodile-like reptiles - the Crocodylomorpha - diverged from the aviana line archosaurs, the group that includes dinosaurs, birds and pterosaurs some 230 million years ago during the Triassic, and looked a little like modern crocodilians .

They had long legs and elongated bodies covered in armor. Until the 1980s, the folidosáuridos were classified as part of the alleged Mesosuchia suborder within the order Crocodilia. No embargor, Benton and Clark determined in 1988 that Mesosuchia was a paraphyletic group containing the ancestor of all modern crocodiles. A simplified evolutionary tree: 9, Crocodylomorpha , mesoeucrocodylia , metasuchia , neosuchia , Sarcosuchus , Crocodilia (modern crocodiles).

Based on the structure of your nose, the closest relative of Sarcosuchus is terminonaris while Dyrosaurus and Pholidosaurus are slightly more distant relatives. As a group, are fish-eating ways to narrow snout of saltwater environments, except Sarcosuchus with its broad snout, being typical of coastal environments.