Crocodilians use a "high walk", with a more erect limb posture that minimizes sideways flexing, to cross long distances.
In the earlier part of the Cenozoic, the world was dominated by the gastornid birds, terrestrial crocodiles like Pristichampsus, and a handful of primitive large mammal groups like uintatheres, mesonychids, and pantodonts.
Located on upper and middle Shiwaliks, consisting mainly of soft sandstone and clay rocks, the park at present has six sets of life-size models, of Stegodon Ganesha, Sivatherium, Hexaprotodon sivalensis, Colossochelys atlas, Paramachairodus and Crocodilia, Mesozoic animals which once thrived in the region.
Skin color in Crocodilia (crocodiles and alligators) is very dependent on water quality.
He is also interested in life history and population dynamics of exploited or threatened reptile taxa, especially among Varanidae and Crocodilia.
Crocodilia | crocodilia |
The Winton Formation had a faunal assemblage including bivalves, gastropods, insects, the lungfish Metaceratodus, turtles, the crocodilian Isisfordia, pterosaurs, and several types of dinosaurs, such as the theropod Australovenator, the sauropod Wintonotitan, and unnamed ankylosaurians and hypsilophodonts.
He received international attention for his investigations into the touch organs of crocodilians, particularly American alligators and Nile crocodiles with Duncan Leitch.
The name Sauria was coined by James Macartney (1802); it was the Latinisation of the French name Sauriens, coined by Alexandre Brongniart (1800) for an order of reptiles in the classification proposed by the author, containing lizards and crocodilians, later discovered not to be each other's closest relatives.
In phylogenetic systematics they are variously defined as the common ancestor and all its descendants of Younginiforms and "crown diapsids" (the common ancestor of lizards, crocodilians and birds, and all their descendants) Callaway 1997, or all diapsids that are more closely related to Sauria than to Araeoscelidia (Laurin and Gauthier 2000).
The Winton Formation had a faunal assemblage including bivalves, gastropods, insects, the lungfish Metaceratodus, turtles, the crocodilian Isisfordia, pterosaurs, and several types of dinosaurs, such as the theropod Australovenator, the sauropod Diamantinasaurus, and unnamed ankylosaurians and hypsilophodonts.