Amber fossils ARE SOOO COOL. It's insane to me you can see a 100 million year old extinct creature in its full form. All of the DNA is long gone but its body is perfectly preserved as if it died only yesterday. Chimerarachne seen below, who had a cool tail whip!

Lolong, reliably the largest modern crocodilian ever measured by humans, and a tragic tale that shows what happens when rural populations mingle with the natural habitat of such mystical creatures they're not prepared for, RIP Lolong.

T. rex is more closely related to this little dinosaur (a hummingbird) than T. rex is to Allosaurus. Also, a hummingbird's humerus is way smaller than it's eyeball. Go home, evolution, you're drunk! 🦖

@historicalbiology.bsky.social - exciting new era has begun! Our first big step to becoming an Open Science & FAIR Journal. If anyone has any questions please do contact our Data Editor @brooke-long-fox.bsky.social

A couple more reptiles I want to appear in PhP Ice Age are Paludirex and Quinkana. Megalania and the saltwater crocodile weren’t the only large predatory reptiles of Pleistocene Australia. Here I’m going to focus on Paludirex.

Of course we can't talk mekosuchines without mentioning Quinkana, a mysterious animal with a deep skull and serrated teeth often interpreted to have been terrestrial. Sadly, while I would have loved to see it, the lack of remains means its at a high risk to age badly.

And the larger, more robust Paludirex vincenti, although much like Gunggamarandu its not entirely clear whether or not it actually reached into the Pleistocene or died during the Pliocene. For entertainment value tho I would have loved to see it featured.

We've finally arrived at mekosuchines, a unique radiation exclusive to Australia and some islands. First lets talk about Paludirex, the swamp king. There are two species to be considered, the smaller Paludirex gracilis which was definitely Pleistocene

What Gunggamarandu would offer is a unique branch of gavialoid on continental Australia. Phylogenies suggest it may have been a very early branch and gharials are an underappreciated part of Cenozoic Australian croc fauna, otherwise dominated by the next few taxa

Instead, lets turn to our last gavialoid over on the Australian mainland: Gunggamarandu. Now two big caveats 1. it's not known from the most complete material 2. it's not entirely clear whether or not it was Pliocene or Pleistocene, like another croc later on

The Kem Kem was home to a few terrestrial crocodylomorphs, and the 2m-long predator Hamadasuchus is one of the more intimidating ones! Size comparison below ⬇️ #sciart #paleoart

A great summary by Adam Yates on the "drop croc" topic. In short, there is no evidence to support tree climbing in any mekosuchine crocodylian. Also, using AI generated articles to further promote this unsubstantiated idea is a really bad look.

Day 2 of #2025SVP announcements! We are delighted to be promoting 6 of our editorial board members: Arnau Bolet, Diego Castaneda, Masaya Iijima, Beniamino Mecozzi, Jorgo Ristevski, & Mohd Shafi Bhat, to associate editors!

Check out this new paper about crocodylian, likely mekosuchine, eggshell fragments from the Eocene of Queensland. Great to see this material finally published. doi.org/10.1080/0272...

Barinasuchus arveloi: as an animal, you just cannot get any cooler than this #paleoart

This hatchling encounters a fully grown Tyrannosaurus rex on a winter morning - 12 metres long and 8 tonnes. The little one will never attain such colossal stature - he has a gloriously different destiny ahead of him. #sciart #paleoart

Replica skeleton of Baru iylwenpeny on display at the Queensland Museum. This is part of the new Croc! exhibit. #MuseumCore #CrocQM

Happy #FossilFriday! Meet Paludirex, a BIG #crocodile from #Australia, one of many crocs coming from the Science Museum of Minnesota to @badweatherbrew.bsky.social for #CroctoberFest tomorrow (Sat, Sept 20)! We’ll be there 12-5pm with sooo much + I’m giving two talks, come raise a glass with us! 🐊🍺🐊

For #Croctober Day 20 I want to shout out some fun etymology. To the left you see Paludirex, a large mekosuchine who's name means "swamp king". On the right is Gunggamarandu, which translates to "river boss". Both have been named by Jorgo Ristevski Art by Eleanor Pease

Confractosuchus and the unsupervized infant child it swallowed before dying

Australia in the Anthropocene: Linking Past, Present and Future. Wonderful project workshop yesterday exploring the diverse methods our students and ECRs are using to examine how Australia's ecosystems have been shaped by people over the long-term and why it matters today.

For #Croctober Day 11 we got Confractosuchus (art by Julius Csotonyi) Confracto once inhabited the Winton Formation of Australia, but unlike the tiny Isisfordia was sizable enough to even feed on dinosaurs. Which we know because we found the bones of an elasmarian in its stomach

#Croctober Day 6 Heres a fun one from a research history POV. In 1997 researchers described a snout tip under the name Baru huberi and in 2016 skull elements were given the name Ultrastenos willisi Only last year did we recognize that both fossils belonged to a single individual

📣Editor spotlight Dr Jorgo Ristevski is an early career palaeontologist that studies crocodyliforms. He researches the extinct crocodylian clade Mekosuchinae. He has named and described several extinct crocodyliform genera and species, including Australia's giant gavialoid Gunggamarandu maunala 🐊

- A hungry adult female Iberosuchus sp. tries her luck ambushing a small Diplocynodon on a river bank - Created for the latest @paleologica.bsky.social video

Bretesuchus bonapartei, a real-life dragon #paleoart

CRACK! Razanandrongobe easily crushes a dinosaur's femur to feed from its nutritious marrow If Barinasuchus' skull rivaled the size of a Daspletosaurus, this crocodyliform's skull rivaled the size of a T. rex, and was arguably more specialized for bone-cracking #paleoart

New paper published today by @weisbeckerbblab.bsky.social and a big group of incredible collaborators! It has been a great honour to contribute to this study and be part of the Ozboneviz team.

A last ditch attempt to save the Orinoco crocodile. 🐊 www.reuters.com/investigates...

#FossilFriday For our first social media posts, we highlight the iconic MB.Av.1010: a complete fossil of Archaeopteryx siemensii; a Late Jurassic species thought to be transitional between theropod dinosaurs & birds. On display at the Berlin Natural History Museum.

- Voay robustus - Commission I made for a very nice guy last week. If someone wants to commission me, Im open, as we say in Spain: Bueno, bonito y barato.

Check out our latest paper validating telencephalon and cerebellum endocast measurements in birds 🐦🦅🦆🦃🪿🐦‍⬛ royalsocietypublishing.org/doi/10.1098/... @evolsara.bsky.social @evoneuro.bsky.social

- Sebecus icaeorhinus - For a prototype, I am quite happy with the result. #Crocodylomorpha

In the Late Triassic, croc relatives took on a broader array of forms and ecological roles than dinosaurs. The largest carnivores, for example, were big croc relatives like our chompy friend Fasolasuchus here. This life-size model is on display at Parque Nacional Talampaya, Argentina. 🧪

Lately I've been more focused on sculpting than 2D , but I felt like doing something fast to keep practice going. A Mekosuchinae indet. inspired by the latest study on its presence in Papua New Guinea. I really need to refocus on painting man. #crocodilia

A year or so ago, @zieglertn.bsky.social notified me that they've come across a fossil #thylacine from one of the caves in eastern Victoria - a BIG one. After hours of delicate prep work, I got to take a look at the beast (though apparently not take great photos... ).

Finished with one of the commissions I have been working on, the Australian Pleistocene crocodilian Quinkana fortirostrum.The commissioner requested the animal be reconstructed emphasising its terrestrial nature, though how terrestrial this animal actually was is debated.

New croc paper alert! 🐊🚨 In this new study led by my friend and colleague Thiago Fachini, we reassessed the cranial morphology and phylogenetic position of Barreirosuchus franciscoi, a peirosaurian from the Late Cretaceous of Brazil. anatomypubs.onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1002/...

New paper alert, just in time for #FossilFriday! A reevaluation of the #crocodylian fossils from the #Pliocene Otibanda Formation in Papua New Guinea. For a quick summary, check out the thread below 🧵👇 You can read the paper here (contact me if you need a PDF): www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

EXCITING NEWS A new paper just dropped on the Otibanda ziphodont, a probable mekosuchine from the Pliocene of Papua New Guinea. I'll drop my thoughts once I manage to get my hands on a PDF, but I'm very much thrilled already. www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10....

I see lots of people who can't readily tell apart the skulls of Melanosuchus and Alligator, so I decided to make this comparison showcasing the differences between them. The two largest of the alligatorids side by side.

Ive been thinking about making a detailed/realistic illustration of Quinkana, since theres a lot of misinformation about it. Which species do you think best represents the genus, Q. timara or Q. fortirostrum?

New #crocpaper alert ! 🐊🚨 Fossil crocodylomorphs lived in a wide diversity of environments compared to extant ones. This review (my first one !) focuses on those adaptations, from very early Triassic forms to crown group eusuchians ! doi.org/10.1002/ar.2... in @anatrecord.bsky.social

- Sutekhsuchus dowsoni - An Egyptian Miocene gavialoid #crocodilia

This is not a drill, a mummified sabretooth cat has been published from the #Pleistocene permafrost of Russia. It's a Homotherium cub! The team (Lopatin et al.) reckon it's Homotherium latidens. It's too young to have enlarged upper canines. Paper is OA ... www.nature.com/articles/s41... cont...

I love this fossil of Alligator prenasalis, a ~35 million-year-old relative of today’s alligators that lived in what’s now South Dakota. You can track how climates changed in the Cenozoic by where crocodylians lived, from the high latitudes of the Arctic down to their current range. 🧪

Hello Bluesky! My name is Jorgo Ristevski, and I am a paleontologist that studies crocodylomorphs.