Wandering Adventure Party

I’ve updated the Illustration.

Seems like they got it straight from the university press release here. I guess we can cut them some slack for using a bit of AI given the recent job losses at that university. They are reported to have lost around 4000 full time staff places in the last year, part of Australia’s recent cut backs to universities that don’t get much international reporting. That’s may hurt their ability to do quality research. Professor Archer noted that "quite clearly, from the many fascinating animals that we’ve already found in this deposit since 1983, we know that with more digging there will be a lot more surprises to come,”. So lets hope they continue to get support.

Unlike modern crocodiles, which mostly lurk in rivers and swamps, mekosuchines were an extraordinarily diverse and adaptable group. They filled ecological roles unlike any reptiles alive today. Some species were small and land-dwelling, while others may have hunted in forests rather than waterways.

UNSW paleontologist Professor Michael Archer describes them with a kind of gleeful disbelief. “It’s a bizarre idea,” he says, “but some of them appear to have been terrestrial hunters in the forests.”

Even more astonishing are the “drop crocs”—semi-arboreal species that, according to fossil evidence, may have climbed trees and leapt down on unsuspecting prey below. Archer likens them to reptilian leopards. “They were perhaps hunting like big cats—dropping out of trees on any unsuspecting thing they fancied for dinner,” he says.

Such behavior challenges our assumptions about crocodiles, painting a picture of ancient ecosystems filled with agile, cunning predators unlike anything in Australia today.

Via BBC news

Illustration from Science News