arminreindl.bsky.social
Artist, crocodile enthusiast, wikipedia editor
tags: #SciArt
270 posts
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Not like I have been fairing much better of late, trying to keep up with my work on Wikipedia is quite time consuming
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I was just hit by the fact that this meme is around 6 years old at this point
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Photos by Shivang Mehta, couldn't fit that in the message above
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Theres an interesting etymological web going on. Like I mentioned the term ghadiala apparently derives from ghara, which is the name of the soft tissue structure seen in adult male gharials named after a type of pot. But obviously the ghara is also the root for the term gharial as a whole
#gharial
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the particular specimen of Rhamphosuchus that preserves the palate isn't actually Rhamphosuchus
Head also draws parallels to "Gavialis" breviceps, which funny enough has been included under Rhamphosuchus pachyrhynchus by Courville et al. earlier this year
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tl,dr Jason Head notes that the Potwar Skull is not as elongated as whats suggested by material of Rhamphosuchus crassidens, he also notes that the exposure of the vomer differs between crassidens and the Potwar skull, which either suggests different affinities or...
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This all definitely needs a lot more study, especially with the recent description of Rhamphosuchus pachyrhynchus, which is of course not something taken into account by the claim that the Potwar skull is distinct from Ramphosuchus
not to mention the mess that is Rhamphosuchus in general
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I'm obviously aware that Rhamphosuchus has been a mess in the past 20 years since the abstract, so I'm not hedging my bets on it, but given how often its cited by other studies I wonder if theres more than just well that
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Size estimates suggest a length of 6 to 7 meters, so a little larger than modern gharials, which can get quite massive in their own right.
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and the fact that they would have interlocked (which does however separate it from Rhamphosuchus, which had an overbite with teeth facing straight down so to say).
The eyes have upturned rims, but they are not as telescoped as in Gavialis, which is one of the reasons it was placed in its own genus.
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tho the same paper did also establish a new species of Rhamphosuchus, R. pachyrhynchus, previously also called "Gharialis" at the time
Overall, the anatomy of Pseudogavialis is interesting but not too surprising, as it resembles Gavialis in many aspects like the splayed, likely very fine teeth
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In 2019 there was a brief overview over Siwalik/Bugti gavialoids published that argued that "Gharialis" curvirostris might either be its own taxon or a synonym of Rhamphosuchus
this new paper went with the former, finding it to have been very similar to modern gharials and possibly the sister genus
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I feel like I remember picking up a paperback version of this back in 2006? Still have it on my shelf.
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time and research will tell I suppose, tho I must admitt that this conclusion does play quite nicely into some of the issues with Diplocynodon
it's definitely a big shift from prior work tho, given how ingrained the alligatoroid interpretation has been so far
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Very rewarding for me personally is the fact that I managed to spot four of my silhouettes used in the phylogenetic tree. My Purussaurus neivensis, my old Gryposuchus pachakamue, my generic Paleosuchus and even an old, somewhat dated Mourasuchus.
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I so desperately want them to do away with the "African species" nonsense they introduced
it was fun enough in Bloodlines but quickly overstayed its welcome (as did most other stuff about the new trilogy)
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Swamp Ape Science on twitter has mentioned that some of the people down where this was shot suspect that this was a case of an unaware gator accidentally getting too close to a defensive nesting crocodile mother, hence the posturing of the croc and the rather relaxed attitude of the gator
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added the video to my personal folder the moment it got posted online and its been in the back of my mind ever since
the highwalking on the American crocodile still impresses me with every rewatch
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Also on a personal note, I should probably consider making a silhouette of a mahajangasuchid and putting it up on Phylopic given that the authors ended up using my Quinkana, presumably because it sort of fit the overall mood of that particular group in the absence of illustrations of the real thing
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For anyone who wants to have a read for themselves
royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/...
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In terms of anatomy, Tewkensuchus is unique in that its postorbital bones are inclined in a way that puts them higher than the rest of the skull table as seen in my quick mock up of the papers figure below
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that the survivors were small like Ogresuchus (art by ArtbyJRC) and simply grew rapidly after the dinosaurs were gone. Personally the second option seems a bit more probable, tho I have to admitt if you subscribe ot the Sebecia hypothesis than option 1 isn't unreasonable either.
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The authors suggests that sebecoids in general were in the 300 to 400 kilo range when the asteroid struck, which obviously would raise a few problems. Of course they also suggest alternate explanations like an ancestral semi-aquatic lifestyle followed by terrestrial radiations or...
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Size is also interesting. Based on the frontal they estimate a skull length of 520 cm and through that a weight of 300 kilos. Larger than any baurusuchid and enormous given it lived just 3 million years after the mass extinction, even if some later sebecoids would outsize it still.