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The Common Descent Podcast

Episode 220 - Terrestrial Crocs

The Common Descent Podcast

Common Descent

Science, Education, Earth Sciences, Natural Sciences, Science:natural Sciences

4.8764 Ratings

🗓️ 22 June 2025

⏱️ 148 minutes

🧾️ Download transcript

Summary

Today’s crocs are iconic semi-aquatic predators, but their extended family tree features lots of land-dwelling cousins. This episode, we take a tour through croc evolutionary history and explore the many times these reptiles have taken to life on dry land. We’ll examine what features these terrestrial crocs shared, which ones they didn’t, and what their fossils tell us about how the shape of crocs has changed over time. In the news: sauropod guts, Australian biomarkers, butterfly scales, and tropical archosaurs. Time markers:Intro & Announcements: 00:00:00News: 00:07:25Main discussion, Part 1: 00:44:20Main discussion, Part 2: 01:23:20Patron question: 02:17:25 Check out our website for this episode’s blog post and more: http://commondescentpodcast.com/ Join us on Patreon to support the podcast and enjoy bonus content: https://www.patreon.com/commondescentpodcast Got a topic you want to hear about? Submit your episode request here: https://commondescentpodcast.com/request-a-topic/ Lots more ways to connect with us: https://linktr.ee/common_descent The Intro and Outro music is “On the Origin of Species” by Protodome. More music like this at http://ocremix.org Musical Interludes are "Professor Umlaut" by Kevin MacLeod (incompetech.com). Licensed under Creative Commons: By Attribution 3.0 http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/3.0

Transcript

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0:00.0

You're listening to the Common Descent Podcast.

0:19.0

Hello, David. Hello, Will.

0:21.8

And hello, listeners.

0:23.4

Welcome to episode 220 of the Common Descent podcast.

0:29.7

This episode, we are discussing terrestrial crocs.

0:33.9

Some kind of special time of the year or something?

0:37.2

It is Croc Month, so we are having a crocky episode and discussing a topic I am extremely excited to get into the details on.

0:47.5

Ah, land crocs.

0:49.0

Land crocs.

0:50.4

We are going to be discussing the many varieties of terrestrial landbound crocodile morphs that have lived on our planet over the millions of years that we've had crocodile morphs.

1:04.2

And there's probably way more than many people suspect since today they are so famously not land crocks. But in the past,

1:13.4

that was not always the case. They were actually quite commonly found running around on land.

1:18.8

So we'll discuss what it means to be terrestrial, go through some of the main groups, and talk about

1:26.3

what their diversity was, and how we can tell when we're looking

1:30.7

at a terrestrial crock in the fossil record. Yeah, we've mentioned a lot of these land crocs

1:35.6

over the history of the podcast. This will be a fun opportunity to put them all in one place and

1:40.8

go over the similarities and differences and trends. Yes.

1:45.0

I'm so excited.

1:47.0

We are discussing this because it is Croc Month, but also because it was requested.

1:54.0

This, or topics within it, were requested by Dai Kaiju fanboy, do you think he saw us?

2:00.0

Josiah, Johannes, Catherine, Ioslectus,

2:04.9

Evan, Piero, and Big Boss Man.

...

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