Crocodylus palaeindicus

History

C. palaeindicus was first named by Scottish paleontologist Hugh Falconer in 1859. Falconer found fossils of the species in the Siwalik Hills of India along with the remains of many other animals like turtles, ostriches, camels, saber-toothed cats, and mastodons. Richard Lydekker later named another crocodile from the Siwalik Hills which he called C. sivalensis. Although the two crocodiles are very similar, C. sivalensis was distinguished from C. palaeindicus because the margin of its skull was less convex. C. sivalensis has recently been synonymized with C. palaeindicus, as the slight differences in shape are thought to be from natural variation or from fossilization. In later years, fossils were also found from Pakistan and Myanmar.

Classification

Historically, C. palaeindicus was considered a direct ancestor of the Mugger crocodile C. palustris. The two species are similar in appearance, and some fossils of C. palaeindicus were at first mistaken for C. palustris.

A 2018 tip dating study by Lee & Yates simultaneously using morphological, molecular (DNA sequencing), and stratigraphic (fossil age) data established the inter-relationships within Crocodylidae. In 2021, Hekkala et al. were able to use paleogenomics, extracting DNA from the extinct Voay, to better establish the relationships within Crocodylidae, including the subfamilies Crocodylinae and Osteolaeminae.

The below cladogram shows the results of the latest study:

References

References

1. (6 September 2021). "Phylogenetic analysis of a new morphological dataset elucidates the evolutionary history of Crocodylia and resolves the long-standing gharial problem". [[PeerJ]].
2. Lydekker, R.. (1885). "Catalogue of the remains of Siwalik Vertebrata contained in the Geological Department of the Indian Museum, Calcutta". Superintendent of Government Printing, India.
3. Brochu, C. A.. (2000). "Phylogenetic relationships and divergence timing of ''Crocodylus'' based on morphology and the fossil record". Copeia.
4. (2010). "A new horned crocodile from the Plio-Pleistocene hominid sites at Olduvai Gorge, Tanzania". [[PLoS ONE]].
5. Michael S. Y. Lee. (27 June 2018). "Tip-dating and homoplasy: reconciling the shallow molecular divergences of modern gharials with their long fossil". [[Proceedings of the Royal Society B]].
6. (2021-04-27). "Paleogenomics illuminates the evolutionary history of the extinct Holocene "horned" crocodile of Madagascar, Voay robustus". Communications Biology.