By Will Dunham
WASHINGTON (Reuters) -After the dinosaurs have disappeared after a scene strike 66 million years ago, mammals became dominant ground animals. But this does not mean that they did not limit. In South America, for example, crocodiles have become the living nightmares – the children of crocodiles and crocodiles today – predators of a summit.
This lineage of ground crocodiles, called Sebecids, lasted for a longer period than previously thought, according to researchers who described the excavations recently discovered in the Dominican Republic, which reveals that the Caribbean Islands were another unexpected shelter for these fierce predators.
To date, the latest excavation of Sebecids has been found in Colombia and has taken to about 10.5-12.5 million years. The history of the Dominican Republican fossils to about 5-7 million years. The largest sebecids reached about 20 feet (6 meters), although the partial remains of the Dominican Republic indicate that there is an animal of about 7 feet (2 meters).
“This was a type of predatory animal that one believed was one of the times of dinosaurs.
Instead, Vianiola Lopez, SepiSiden, said at the top of the food chain in South America during the era of mammals alongside terrorist birds, and giant birds that do not fly up to about 10 feet (3 meters) with huge and square enforcements anywhere.
Various types of earth crocodiles that date back to the trial period inhabited more than 200 million years ago. Most of them, like them alive today, lived a lifestyle. But some invaded the marine world and others lived exclusively on Earth, such as sebecids.
Sebecids are built differently from the usual semi -crocodiles.
They had longer legs and a more straightforward position, able to run quickly to hunt prey. They had a narrow and deep skull – a superficial similar to those in a dinosaur that eats meat and is very different from modern crocodiles that have a wider and virtual skull. Sebecids’s teeth were long and tight with great tooth walking along the edges to pieces of meat, similar to meat dinosaurs.
Like many other crocodiles, they had a protective shield made of bone panels called Scutes included in their skin.
The excavations in the Dominican Republic in 2023 were a single age that is closely similar to those in South America and the two paragraphs with the characteristics that enabled researchers to conclusively conclude that these remains belonged to Sebecid.
“It is amazing to believe that these fast ground crocodiles that resemble dinosaurs with serrated teeth specialized to pieces of meat survived in the hunting lazy in the Caribbean Sea, rodents and anything else that existed until only a few million years at the University of Florida,” said Jonathan Bluch, a coordinator at Vertibrat at the Florida Museum.
The researchers said that the fossils of dentists from one of the tools dating back to about 18 million years were previously discovered in Cuba and another dating back to about 29 million years previously in Puerto Rico that this lineage was widespread in the West Islands.
But how did living crocodiles from South America get there? The researchers said that their presence in the islands is another evidence indicating the existence of a road of temporary land bridges or a series of islands that allowed wild animals to travel from South America to the Caribbean Sea region about 32-35 million years ago.
“The distance between the islands and South America was much shorter than it is today. This is likely to facilitate the dispersion of Sepiosidine from South America,” said Veniola Lopez. “This indicates the importance of carrots as a museum of biological diversity, while maintaining the last members of some groups that have become extinct everywhere.”
(Will Doneham’s reports, edited by Rosalba Operation) participated
