The Ancestor of Modern Crocodiles Found in Brazil!

Crocodiles are the living relatives of the only surviving Archosauria group of reptiles (birds are directly evolved from dinosaurs, thus living dinosaurs). But what you may have not suspected is that crocodiles evolved from land animals (even if you are accustomed with the image of the beast stalking in the water), fact revealed for example by their longer hind limbs. Crocodiles during the early Mesosoic era even ran on two feet!

In October 2007, a Brazilian team described in the New Zealand journal "Zootaxa" an 80-million-year-old land-bound reptile, presented as a possible missing link between dinosaur era crocodiles and modern-day species. The finding has been presented for the first time to the public on Thursday.

"The fossil of the 5�-foot-long (1.7-meter-long) predator was found in 2004 near the small city of Monte Alto, 215 miles (344 kilometers) northwest of Sao Paulo," paleontologist Felipe Mesquita de Vasconcellos told Reuters.

"The long-limbed and extremely agile animal, dubbed Montealtosuchus arrudacamposi, roamed arid and hot terrain that is now Brazilian countryside. As a missing link to prehistoric crocodiles, it offers us an excellent opportunity to study the evolutionary transition of these animals. It has a mix of morphological traits common in prehistoric crocodiles and in the ones that exist today," said Vasconcellos.

"The discovery could be of major importance. We have very little evidence of terrestrial crocodiles, so the example from Brazil could form a missing link of a whole evolutionary diversity," said Michael J. Ryan, curator of vertebrate paleontology at the Cleveland Museum of Natural History.

In 2006, the same Brazilian team from the Federal University of Rio de Janeiro had found the remains of another fossil crocodile, named Uberabasuchus terrificus (terrible crocodile of Uberaba). This species lived 70 million years ago and was about 10 ft (3 m) long, with a weight around 650 pounds (300 kg).