ArticleProceedings. Biological sciences2021
Ecological opportunity and the rise and fall of crocodylomorph evolutionary innovation.
Article in Proceedings. Biological sciences, 2021. The graph could read no effect estimate from its abstract, so it casts no vote on the map. Cited by 23 papers.
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23 citing papers in PubMed.
- Constraints and adaptations in crocodyliform skull evolution.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- Evolution of growth strategy in alligators and caimans informed by osteohistology of the late Eocene early-diverging alligatoroid crocodylian Diplocynodon hantoniensis.Journal of anatomy · 2025Article
- Landscape-explicit phylogeography illuminates the ecographic radiation of early archosauromorph reptiles.Nature ecology & evolution · 2025Article
- The effects of cryptic diversity on diversification dynamics analyses in Crocodylia.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2025Article
- The pseudosuchian record in paleohistology: A small review.Anatomical record (Hoboken, N.J. : 2007) · 2025Review
- Morphological innovation did not drive diversification in Mesozoic-Cenozoic brachiopods.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- Widespread convergence towards functional optimization in the lower jaws of crocodile-line archosaurs.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- The rise of dietary diversity in coral reef fishes.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2024Article
- Evolution of ancient satellite DNAs in extant alligators and caimans (Crocodylia, Reptilia).BMC biology · 2024Article
- Locomotion and the early Mesozoic success of Archosauromorpha.Royal Society open science · 2024Article
- Decoupling speciation and extinction reveals both abiotic and biotic drivers shaped 250 million years of diversity in crocodile-line archosaurs.Nature ecology & evolution · 2024Article
- Shark mandible evolution reveals patterns of trophic and habitat-mediated diversification.Communications biology · 2023Article
- Shifts in food webs and niche stability shaped survivorship and extinction at the end-Cretaceous.Science advances · 2022Article
- The ecological diversification and evolution of Teleosauroidea (Crocodylomorpha, Thalattosuchia), with insights into their mandibular biomechanics.Ecology and evolution · 2022Article
- Global ecomorphological restructuring of dominant marine reptiles prior to the Cretaceous-Palaeogene mass extinction.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Miocene fossils from the southeastern Pacific shed light on the last radiation of marine crocodylians.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- Large size in aquatic tetrapods compensates for high drag caused by extreme body proportions.Communications biology · 2022Article
- An intermediate crocodylian linking two extant gharials from the Bronze Age of China and its human-induced extinction.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2022Article
- A second peirosaurid crocodyliform from the Mid-Cretaceous Kem Kem Group of Morocco and the diversity of Gondwanan notosuchians outside South America.Royal Society open science · 2021Article
- Complex macroevolutionary dynamics underly the evolution of the crocodyliform skull.Proceedings. Biological sciences · 2021Article
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6 authors.
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Abstract
Understanding the origin, expansion and loss of biodiversity is fundamental to evolutionary biology. The approximately 26 living species of crocodylomorphs (crocodiles, caimans, alligators and gharials) represent just a snapshot of the group's rich 230-million-year history, whereas the fossil record reveals a hidden past of great diversity and innovation, including ocean and land-dwelling forms, herbivores, omnivores and apex predators. In this macroevolutionary study of skull and jaw shape disparity, we show that crocodylomorph ecomorphological variation peaked in the Cretaceous, before declining in the Cenozoic, and the rise and fall of disparity was associated with great heterogeneity in evolutionary rates. Taxonomically diverse and ecologically divergent Mesozoic crocodylomorphs, like marine thalattosuchians and terrestrial notosuchians, rapidly evolved novel skull and jaw morphologies to fill specialized adaptive zones. Disparity in semi-aquatic predatory crocodylians, the only living crocodylomorph representatives, accumulated steadily, and they evolved more slowly for most of the last 80 million years, but despite their conservatism there is no evidence for long-term evolutionary stagnation. These complex evolutionary dynamics reflect ecological opportunities, that were readily exploited by some Mesozoic crocodylomorphs but more limited in Cenozoic crocodylians.
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