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In 1824, French naturalist Georges Cuvier
became the first scientist to describe a strange
specimen of an extinct crocodilian.
But even he had no idea how truly odd this
animal would turn out to be.
The specimen was from central France and consisted
of just a few teeth and bones, enough to tell
that it was some kind of croc-like reptile,
but one unlike any that had ever been discovered.
Cuvier noted that the teeth were flat and
serrated, completely different from the cone-shaped
teeth found in modern crocodilians.
This reptile seemed equipped more for biting
through flesh, than grabbing prey and pulling
it into the water, as many crocodilians do
today.
Cuvier described this animal as “the crocodile
from the Marl of Argenton” which sounds
a lot more regal in French.
Today this animal is known as Boverisuchus.
But it wasn't until almost two centuries later
that the full body of this strange reptile
was finally pieced together, revealing that
those flat, sharp teeth belonged to one of
the weirdest members of the order Crocodilia
ever found.
For one thing, its legs were much longer than
those of most crocs today.
And its hind legs were a lot longer than its
front legs.
Plus, instead of claws, its toes were each
capped with … hooves! -- much like those
found on early horses at the time.
So, yeah!
There once was a crocodilian with hooves that
could run down prey on land
And some researchers think that it had another,
even stranger ability, although other’s
aren’t so sure.
Now, how did this living nightmare, this “crocodile
from the marl,” come to evolve?
Basically, it’s the product of a whole lot
of family competition.
When I say Boverisuchus was a crocodilian,
I don’t mean that it was a crocodile.
But it was a member of the same Order as crocodiles,
which is known as Crocodilia.
And anything within that order, including
modern animals like alligators and caimans,
are called crocodilians.
And members of the order Crocodilia have been
around in one form or another since the late
Cretaceous, around 100 million years ago.
But after the extinction event at the end
of the Cretaceous, the non-avian dinosaurs
and other large archosaurs were gone.
And that’s when crocodilians really began
to diversify and flourish, taking on many
of the niches that those animals had left
empty.
One such group of enterprising reptiles was
the now-extinct family known as Planocraniidae
, a group of crocodilians that are characterized
by living mostly on land, instead of in the
water, and having those strange blade-like
teeth.
Planocraniidae first showed up in the Paleocene
Epoch about 61 million years ago, starting
with a species from China known as Planocrania
hengdongensis .
But the family soon spread and diversified.
And by the middle of the Eocene Epoch, around
50 million years ago, its members could be
found running around Germany and North America
-- including the most widespread of them all:
Boverisuchus.
No matter where it lived, Boverisuchus usually
wasn’t the only crocodilian around.
And that might have been one of the driving
evolutionary forces that turned it into the
nightmare fodder that it became.
After all, when a lot of carnivores are in
the same place, it creates competition.
And when that happens, sometimes you have
to do something a little different to set
yourself apart, in order to survive.
A good example of this phenomenon is recorded
in the coal-bearing layers of the 48-million-year
old fossil site in Germany known as Geiseltal
.
This layer of swampy sediment preserves the
bodies of 4 different genera of crocodilians,
in addition to Boverisuchus.
There was Asiatosuchus , which was nearly
3 meters long; the medium-sized Diplocynodon;
and the tiny pug-faced Allognathosuchus at
just over half-meter long.
Studies of the teeth and skulls of these crocs
showed that each genus had adapted to its
own ecological niche.
Asiatosuchus, for example, was the biggest
and ate large fish and sometimes ambushed
mammals that came to drink from the swamp.
But Diplocynodon ate small fish and frogs.
And Allognathosuchus was more likely eating
small invertebrates, like crayfish.
But all three of these crocodilians were aquatic,
or at least semi-aquatic.
They had short legs, and long, fin-like tails.
They weren’t built for running after prey
on land.
And there were some predators on land, but
not nearly as many as you might expect.
48 million years ago, bears, cats, and dogs
hadn’t evolved yet.
Which means that a large niche for a predator
had been left empty.
And the land was full of potential prey – from
big terrestrial birds to little, dog-sized
horses.
So any crocodilian that could take advantage
of that wide-open niche on land would have
a better chance of thriving, especially when
there were already three other kinds of crocodilians
patrolling the waterways.
Ok but then how did Boverisuchus come to fill that
niche?
How did its ancestors become this running,
razor-toothed predator?
Well, the fossil record doesn’t really help
us there.
In the United States, Boverisuchus shows up
fully-formed and ready to run in the early
Eocene.
It appears in the fossil record nearly simultaneously,
about 55 million years ago, in Texas, Wyoming,
and Utah, before spreading to Europe.
And there’s no sign of the ancestor that
would eventually lead to Boverisuchus.
But we can find clues to its origins by looking
at some of its modern relatives.
Because, the fact is, not all modern crocodilians
are bound to the water.
Some of them still do hunt on land – like
one known as the smooth-fronted caiman.
This caiman isn’t closely related to Boverisuchus
or the other Planocraniids.
But it does have a similar lifestyle.
Not only does it tend to hunt on land but,
like Boverisuchus, it can sprint for short
distances.
It even has teeth that are a bit more blade-like
than other crocodilians’.
So researchers think that whatever Boverisuchus
descended from probably looked and behaved
a lot like today’s smooth-fronted caiman.
And that ancestor would have been primed for
natural selection to increase its speed and
biting power, making it better suited to life
on land.
Now, one key to that transition was in its
teeth.
Those flat, serrated teeth that Boverisuchus
and other Planocraniids had are known as ziphodont
dentition, and it made a big difference in
how they could take down big prey.
Many modern crocodilians drag their prey underwater.
So they have conical teeth that can clench
their prey in their mouths as they drown it.
Which is..not how I want to go
But terrestrial crocodilians needed sharp,
slicing teeth to help them inflict a lot of
damage in single bites, killing their prey
more quickly.
Which is...not a better option
Now, another adaptation that gave this reptile
a leg-up for life on land was … its strange
legs.
Like I mentioned before, the legs of Boverisuchus
were much longer than a typical crocodilian’s.
And its back legs were longer than its front
legs.
And this is where things get even more interesting.
And … pretty controversial.
If you’ve ever heard of Boverisuchus, or
heard of it by its other, older name, Pristichampsus,
then you might have heard that this reptile
had a very strange ability indeed: the ability
to run on just two legs.
On some TV shows and websites, it’s been
depicted as being facultatively bipedal, meaning
that it could at times, carry itself on its
hind legs, so it could run even faster on
land.
This ability was proposed by a researcher
in Germany, who thought that its unusually
long back legs might have made this possible.
After all, many reptiles with a body plan
like this are capable of running on their
hind legs, like basilisks and collared lizards.
And if Boverisuchus really could have run
on two legs, I’d be the first to say that
it would’ve made this animal even more terrifyingly
awesome.
Or, awesomely terrifying?
But we talked to a couple of experts in ancient
crocodylians, including Dr. Christopher Brochu,
who re-classified Pristichampsus as Boverisuchus.
And he and others are not at all convinced.
They argue that the limb proportions of this
animal aren’t nearly as extreme as they
are in modern bipedal lizards, and that its
center of mass was also too far forward for
it to have been able to raise its upper body.
If Boverisuchus wasn’t bipedal, I’d have
to say I’d be disappointed.
But also somewhat relieved?
And in any case, Boverisuchus did have one
more undisputed and equally unusual trait
that helped it master life on dry land: its
hooves.
Most crocodilians have pointy fingers that
are tipped in claws.
But the claws of Boverisuchus were rounded
and blunt – much like hooves.
Pretty much the only difference between the
hooves of Boverisuchus and the hooves of its
prey, like early horses, was that its hooves
were a little narrower.
So with its hooved hands and feet, it would’ve
been much better at pushing off the ground
and adding bursts of speed to catch its prey.
And the fossil evidence suggests that these
running crocodilians were quite good at what
they did.
Several horse fossils found at Geiseltal in
the 1950s appear to have crocodilian teeth
embedded in them.
And at another site in Germany, there’s
even a primate jaw with bite marks and teeth
that show evidence of going through the very
acidic digestive tract of a crocodilian.
But despite the many adaptations that Boverisuchus
had at its disposal, we don’t have any toothy,
hooved, running crocodilians today.
And I'm going to count that as a positive
The last of the planocraniids, a species known
as Boverisuchus vorax, went extinct between
40 million and 45 million years ago.
It was, as they say, the end of an era -- but
also the beginning of a new abundance of mammalian
predators.
The earliest members of the order Carnivora
prowled the land around this time, as did
the creodonts - an odd group of mammals that
seemed at once catlike and doglike, though
they weren’t actually related to either.
It’s not clear whether these warm-blooded
animals outcompeted the running crocodilians,
but it’s possible.
And a big environmental change was also underway
in the last half of the Eocene, thanks to
the chemistry of mountain-building.
Earlier in the Eocene, the collision of the
Indian Plate with the Eurasian Plate created
the Himalayas, and the slow weathering of
these new mountains gradually removed Carbon
Dioxide from the air.
These and other plate movements also changed
the circulation of air currents, and together
these forces caused the climate to cool.
Crocodilian ranges started to shrink, retreating
from as far north as Wyoming to areas closer
to the equator.
So perhaps Boverisuchus, in cooler weather,
simply couldn’t compete with all these new
mammalian predators.
Ancient Crocodylians like Boverisuchus owed
much of their success to the competition that
took place within their own family, which
drove their evolutionary development after
the extinction of the non-avian dinosaurs
In the case of Boverisuchus, that resulted
in a crocodylian that could run on land, on
hooved feet.
But when faced with competition outside its
family, in a rapidly changing world, in the
end, even this speedy reptile couldn’t keep
up.
Thanks for joining me today in the Konstantin
Haase studio!
And you might notice that I'm wearing
our first ever Eons shirt. Complete with a pocket
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Now Boverisuchus was a fascinating reptile,
but you haven’t seen anything until you’ve
learned about drepanosaurs and the other strange
reptiles that were unique to the Triassic.
And you can do that right here!
