Miocene Anapsid Scute

From Brownie's Beach, Chesapeake Beach, MD; Miocene Epoch

Was It Ever Safe to Go in the Water?

Guarinisuchus munizi

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In what I'm sure will be a long line of blogging on ScienceBlogs posts as well as on peer reviewed research - and sometimes both - here is a summary of a post from Laelaps on a new crocodilian, G. munizi. After the K-T extinction that finished off the non-avian dinosaurs, especially the monstrous aquatic mosasaurs, the three-meter long archosauromorph fluorished. These sauropsids have a Gondwanan distribution, most likely moving from North Africa to the (then nearby) South America. G. munizi would certainly have made a snack out of the other major group filling the space left by the absent dinosaurs - mammals.