It seems like the issue is your lack of understanding of evolution, not the article’s choice of title. Evolution doesn’t work like in The X-Men.
>“Modern Crocodiles Are Evolving at a Rapid Rate: Despite their reputation as ‘living fossils,’ crocodiles have changed dramatically in the last two million years”
Is “modern” a technical term in biology/palaeontology, or is it just meant in the ordinary sense? Asking because I don’t actually know. In history, “modern” is a technical term - it refers to the period beginning in 1500 (approximately) - which is a bit different from the everyday meaning, the average person would probably not call the 1500s “modern”.
Last summer at a wedding, I met a paleontologist studying ancient crocodiles and his story was fascinating:
Before the K-Pg extinction, Crocodilia was a pretty wide order, with many different species occupying multiple ecological niches, from herbivore crocodiles with teeth like cows', to cat-sized running crocodiles living in the desert. And during the K-Pg extinction, most of it disappeared with only a handful species remaining, occupying two really close ecological niches (semi-aquatic opportunist predators and semi-aquatic fish eater (gharial and galse gharial)).
And he contrasted this collapse with what happened to dinosaurs (also know as birds), which today still have thousands of species occupying almost every possible ecological niche.
It's basically Joe Rogan for smart and sane people. None of the grifters, all of the scientists + academics. Been going on forever, covering a huge range of subjects.
Joe Rogan? Was interested, now no longer. Using Joe Rogan to describe a podcast cheapens your pitch. Unless your saying the podcast is trying to have incredibly broad appeal without much consideration to intelligent thought or the impacts of what they are putting out to the world except in order to increase their own viewership numbers.
And note that when you click to an episode to see who the guests are (usually three professors or other experts on the given topic) there's also a reading list.
I guess it's similar to Joe Rogan's show in that it's a recording of people speaking.
Joe Rogan occasionally has some super interesting podcasts where he invites an academic/expert or two out to talk about their specialisation. He listens, occasionally asking a question.
That's how I first encountered him - he was interviewing John Carmack. The later episodes were disappointing, but I spent a year keeping an eye on the guest list. There were maybe 4-5 really good interviews in that year.
In Our Time is like those good episodes but with an extremely high signal-to-noise ratio and generally better.
What happened at the K-Pg limit with dinosaurs and crocodiles is similar, both went from being very wide to a handful of species remaining. The difference is what happened afterwards, when the few (single?) species of dinosaurs that remained diversified into what we now call birds.
The interesting thing from the article is that crocodiles are still evolving rapidly, but not diversifying! they seem to be successful in their narrow and specialist niche.
I wonder how close crocodilians were to being extinct after the K-Pg limit. If they did, they would be another non-dinosaur archosaurian group only known from fossils, like pterosaurs. Someone from such timeline would probably be delighted to see alive, as seeing one would be the as amazing for them as seeing a pterosaur or triceratops would be for us.
They're the last living non-avian archosaurs. We sure take crocodilians for granted.
That sort of aquatic ambush predator niche has always been very successful, so I think we'd end up with a similar animal with a similar body plan that would fill the niche; it's evolved many times before.
I never understood why they don’t eat more birds. You’d think they could come up underneath and grab a duck or goose. And I always see birds just hanging out nearby.
"crocodiles have changed dramatically in the last two million years" is a pretty important statement to keep in mind. Whenever we discuss modern animals and traits that are evolving, it's a bit misleading to not apply the time frame.
I did expect this to be about them reacting to climate change and other human factors, as there's been many stories like this recently. But I suppose a couple million years is a blink of the eye for a family this ancient.
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[ 4.7 ms ] story [ 97.9 ms ] threadhttps://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000zmhf
Frightening, clickbait title.
I was thinking due to recent climate changes that they had grown wings or long legs or something truly horrible.
>“Modern Crocodiles Are Evolving at a Rapid Rate: Despite their reputation as ‘living fossils,’ crocodiles have changed dramatically in the last two million years”
Before the K-Pg extinction, Crocodilia was a pretty wide order, with many different species occupying multiple ecological niches, from herbivore crocodiles with teeth like cows', to cat-sized running crocodiles living in the desert. And during the K-Pg extinction, most of it disappeared with only a handful species remaining, occupying two really close ecological niches (semi-aquatic opportunist predators and semi-aquatic fish eater (gharial and galse gharial)).
And he contrasted this collapse with what happened to dinosaurs (also know as birds), which today still have thousands of species occupying almost every possible ecological niche.
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/m000zmhf
https://www.bbc.co.uk/programmes/b006qykl/episodes/player
And note that when you click to an episode to see who the guests are (usually three professors or other experts on the given topic) there's also a reading list.
I guess it's similar to Joe Rogan's show in that it's a recording of people speaking.
That's how I first encountered him - he was interviewing John Carmack. The later episodes were disappointing, but I spent a year keeping an eye on the guest list. There were maybe 4-5 really good interviews in that year.
In Our Time is like those good episodes but with an extremely high signal-to-noise ratio and generally better.
The interesting thing from the article is that crocodiles are still evolving rapidly, but not diversifying! they seem to be successful in their narrow and specialist niche.
They're the last living non-avian archosaurs. We sure take crocodilians for granted.
https://bmcecolevol.biomedcentral.com/articles/10.1186/1471-...
They’re big and they eat people.