14 species of croc coexisted in prehistoric Venezuela

Adam Khor

The article mentions two, a large croc similar to those living today, and this, Globidentosuchus, a caiman with spherical back teeth to crush snails, crabs or maybe turtles?

http://phys.org/news/2013-05-crocodiles-million-years.html



Somewhat similar to Globidens, the spherical-toothed mosasaur:

Kess73

Find it very interesting how modern day South America has continued the trend of being the spot of the planet with the most diverse range of crocs/gators etc.

Galvasean

I wonder if it's anything to do with the minerals in the soil/rocks. I seem to recall hearing that the region is unusually rich in lithium.

Adam Khor

I've never heard anything about crocs running on lithium :pac:

Jokes aside, maybe South America has the most species, but Asia has more diversity in a way, having several species of crocodile, an alligator, the gharial and the false gharial (which is a separate genus of its own).

Galvasean

Adam Khor wrote: »

maybe South America has the most species, but Asia has more diversity in a way, having several species of crocodile, an alligator, the gharial and the false gharial (which is a separate genus of its own).

This is me guessing, but would the Asian eco-system be older, thereby giving the crocodylomorphs more time to evolve separately into genera as opposed to just species?

Adam Khor

Galvasean wrote: »

This is me guessing, but would the Asian eco-system be older, thereby giving the crocodylomorphs more time to evolve separately into genera as opposed to just species?

I don´t know... now that you mention it I don´t think I've ever read about prehistoric crocodilians from Asia (except for mentions here and there of Rhamphosuchus, that gigantic false gharial relative that may be amongst the largest crocodilians:



I think maybe its just that crocs used to be more diverse everywhere (in South America there were once gharials and those weird filter-feeding crocs, as well as land crocs, so it must have been only recently that it lost most of its diversity...)

Kess73

Adam Khor wrote: »

I've never heard anything about crocs running on lithium :pac:

Jokes aside, maybe South America has the most species, but Asia has more diversity in a way, having several species of crocodile, an alligator, the gharial and the false gharial (which is a separate genus of its own).

Thought the South American range both extinct and modern was the more diverse in terms of having a larger range of specialised hunters/feeders than anywhere else on the planet?

Asia has/had a number of different species but did not think that it has/had a similar or greater number of specialised species co existing. In terms of what they eat a lot of the asian crocs are just scaled up versions and would directly compete if in the same waters with the diversity mainly being the crocs/gator on one side and the Gharials (true and false) on the other side.

Was under the impression that many of the South American crocs/gators etc still have differences that allowed manyto co existas their diets were so different and that they have very different physical adaptations that allowed them to specialise on different food sources from the same waters?


Was also under the impression that South America was the only land mass that retained a strong diversity (in relation to what it had millions of years beforehand) amongst it's crocs/gators etc compared to other land masses. I always thought that modern day Asia and Africa had less diversity now with those species than what fossil records suggest they had millions of years ago.

Adam Khor

Kess73 wrote: »

Thought the South American range both extinct and modern was the more diverse in terms of having a larger range of specialised hunters/feeders than anywhere else on the planet?

Asia has/had a number of different species but did not think that it has/had a similar or greater number of specialised species co existing. In terms of what they eat a lot of the asian crocs are just scaled up versions and would directly compete if in the same waters with the diversity mainly being the crocs/gator on one side and the Gharials (true and false) on the other side.

Was under the impression that many of the South American crocs/gators etc still have differences that allowed manyto co existas their diets were so different and that they have very different physical adaptations that allowed them to specialise on different food sources from the same waters?


Was also under the impression that South America was the only land mass that retained a strong diversity (in relation to what it had millions of years beforehand) amongst it's crocs/gators etc compared to other land masses. I always thought that modern day Asia and Africa had less diversity now with those species than what fossil records suggest they had millions of years ago.

Well, South America only has two species of croc (the Orinoco croc and the American croc), and even though the Orinoco croc leans more towards piscivory, its not really that different from the American croc. Also, the American croc if I'm not mistaken is not native to South America but rather came from the north (most of its range is in North and Central America, with only a small number living in northernmost South America).

I guess you're right about the diversity of caimans, tho, since you have the two small rather terrestrial dwarf caimans, the giant black caiman, the generalist spectacled caiman and yacare, and the broad snouted caiman that feeds mostly on turtles and mollusks- but then in Asia there's the Chinese alligator which is also a specialized shell crusher...

That's why I think Asia may have been a rival for South America in the past, but mostly because, like I said, I really don´t know much about fossil crocs from that part of the world... gotta find out more :pac: