Are crocodiles non avian dinosaurs?
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Are crocodiles non avian dinosaurs?
For starters, dinosaurs and crocodiles are both reptiles. But if you’ve read How Dinosaurs Work, you know that many scientists agree that birds, not crocodiles, descended from dinosaurs. Yet, we also know that birds and crocodiles are the only extant species that share a common ancestor with dinosaurs.
What dinosaurs did crocodiles evolve from?
archosaurs
Along with pterosaurs and dinosaurs, crocodiles were an offshoot of the archosaurs, the “ruling lizards” of the early to middle Triassic period; needless to say, the earliest dinosaurs and the earliest crocodiles resembled one another a lot more than either resembled the first pterosaurs, which also evolved from …
Did alligators evolve from birds?
Birds and alligators have little in common, other than that the first is sometimes the other’s lunch. Alligators and birds are part of the same larger group, called archosaurs, which has existed for 250 million years and which has given rise not only to birds and crocodilians, but also to dinosaurs.
Are alligators and crocodiles the same?
Family. Alligators and crocodiles are from the same scientific order, but from different families. They are both members of the Crocodylia, but crocodiles are from the Crocodylidae family, while alligators come from the Alligatordae family.
(Crocodilians are actually more closely related to birds and dinosaurs than they are to other reptiles, i.e., lizards, snakes, and turtles.) Their analysis indicates that the ancestor of all archosaurs probably had an extremely slow rate of molecular evolution, and that the rate of change sped up in the bird lineage.
Did crocodiles or alligators come first?
The first alligator ancestors evolved some 245 million years ago. About 80 million years ago, during the Cretaceous period, crocodilians appeared. This group includes alligatoroids, such as Brachychampsa, as well as their close relatives the crocodiles and caimans.
Do crocodiles and Dinosaurs exist today?
Crocodiles and dinosaurs lived in the same period millions of years ago. However, unlike dinosaurs, they survived and still exist today all around the world. What were prehistoric crocodiles called? Prehistoric crocodiles were called archosaurs.
What are prehistoric crocodiles called?
Prehistoric crocodiles were called archosaurs. These ruling reptiles originated over 250 million years ago, long before dinosaurs, birds and modern-day crocodiles. They’ve since evolved into 23 different species.
Birds are more closely related to dinosaurs than crocodiles because they share a common meat-eating ancestor called theropods. The divergence happened a very long time ago, which explains the many notable differences.
Why are crocodiles called dinosaurs uncles of dinosaurs?
Dinosaurs and Crocodilians are both descended from the common ancestor of all archosaurs (as are pterosaurs), but the lineages diverged soon after. So crocodiles have been called “dinosaur uncles” (relatives of dinosaur ancestors), but not dinosaurs themselves.
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