Related topics: dinosaurs · fossil

From edge of extinction to Australia's croc 'paradise'

If you want a snappy death, one expert's advice is to leap into a river near the Australian city of Darwin—within minutes, you'll be in the jaws of one of the hundreds of crocodiles that stalk its murky waters.

Bottlenose dolphins observed attacking manatee calves

An international team of marine scientists has observed multiple instances of bottlenose dolphins attacking manatee calves over many years. In their paper published in the open-access journal PLOS ONE, the group describes ...

A croc's life: There's more than meets the eye

Saltwater crocodiles are large predators that lurk in muddy waters, with jaws powerful enough to attack anything from water buffalo to humans... but they are also just big chilled-out lounge-lizards who love to sunbake.

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Crocodile

See full taxonomy.

A crocodile is any species belonging to the family Crocodylidae (sometimes classified instead as the subfamily Crocodylinae). The term can also be used more loosely to include all members of the order Crocodilia: i.e. the true crocodiles, the alligators and caimans (family Alligatoridae) and the gharials (family Gavialidae), or even the Crocodylomorpha which includes prehistoric crocodile relatives and ancestors. Crocodiles are large aquatic reptiles that live throughout the tropics in Africa, Asia, the Americas and Australia. Crocodiles tend to congregate in freshwater habitats like rivers, lakes, wetlands and sometimes in brackish water. They feed mostly on vertebrates like fish, reptiles, and mammals, sometimes on invertebrates like mollusks and crustaceans, depending on species. They are an ancient lineage, and are believed to have changed little since the time of the dinosaurs. They are believed to be 200 million years old whereas dinosaurs became extinct 65 million years ago; crocodiles survived great extinction events.

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