The Evolution of Crocodiles
Melvyn Bragg and guests discuss the remarkable diversity of the animals that dominated life on land in the Triassic, before the rise of the dinosaurs in the Jurassic, and whose descendants are often described wrongly as ‘living fossils’. For tens of millions of years, the ancestors of alligators and Nile crocodiles included some as large as a bus, some running on two legs like a T Rex and some that lived like whales. They survived and rebounded from a series of extinction events but, while the range of habitats of the dinosaur descendants such as birds covers much of the globe, those of the crocodiles have contracted, even if the animals themselves continue to evolve today as quickly as they ever have.
Guests
-
Anjali Goswami No other episodes
Research Leader in Life Sciences and Dean of Postgraduate Education at the Natural History Museum -
Philip Mannion No other episodes
Lecturer in the Department of Earth Sciences at University College London - Steve Brusatte
3 episodes
Professor of Palaeontology and Evolution at the University of Edinburgh
Reading list
-
The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World
Steve Brusatte (Picador, 2018) Google Books → -
Dinosaur Paleobiology
Stephen L. Brusatte (Wiley-Blackwell, 2012) Google Books → -
Carnivoran Evolution: New Views on Phylogeny, Form and Function
Anjali Goswami and Anthony Friscia (eds.) (Cambridge University Press, 2010) Google Books →
Related episodes
-
The Fish-Tetrapod Transition
20 Oct, 2022 570 Biology -
Feathered Dinosaurs
16 Apr, 2020 560 Fossils and prehistoric life -
The Permian-Triassic Boundary
28 Jun, 2007 550 Earth sciences and geology -
The Whale - A History
21 May, 2009 570 Biology -
Mammals
13 Oct, 2005 590 Animals (Zoology) -
Ediacara Biota
9 Jul, 2009 560 Fossils and prehistoric life -
The Late Devonian Extinction
11 Mar, 2021 560 Fossils and prehistoric life -
Doggerland
27 Jun, 2019 930 History of the Ancient World -
Human Evolution
16 Feb, 2006 560 Fossils and prehistoric life -
The Origins of Life
23 Sep, 2004 570 Biology -
Fossils
22 Mar, 2001 560 Fossils and prehistoric life -
The Cambrian Period
17 Feb, 2005 560 Fossils and prehistoric life -
Corals
28 Oct, 2021 570 Biology -
Plankton
5 Oct, 2023 570 Biology -
The Neanderthals
17 Jun, 2010 560 Fossils and prehistoric life -
Homo erectus
14 Apr, 2022 570 Biology -
The Evolution of Horses
27 Feb, 2020 590 Animals (Zoology) -
Hybrids
31 Oct, 2019 570 Biology -
Human Origins
27 Apr, 2000 560 Fossils and prehistoric life -
The KT Boundary
23 Jun, 2005 560 Fossils and prehistoric life
Programme ID: m000zmhf
Episode page: bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000zmhf
Auto-category: 590 (Zoology and Animal Sciences)