The Rise and Fall of the Dinosaurs: A New History of a Lost World: The Definitive Dinosaur Encyclopedia with Stunning Illustrations, Embark on a Prehistoric Quest!

by Steve Brusatte

many skeletons of similar-size animals found in Brazil, but they are crocodiles, not theropods. Some of them were fairly standard water dwellers that probably wouldn’t have competed very much with dinosaurs, but others were bizarre animals adapted for living on the land, so unlike today’s crocs. Baurusuchus was a long-legged, doglike pursuit predator. Mariliasuchus had teeth that looked like the incisors, canines, and molars of mammals, which it probably used like pigs to eat a smorgasbord omnivorous diet. Armadillosuchus was a burrower with bands of flexible body armor, and it may have been able to roll up in the style of an armadillo, hence its name. None of these animals lived in North America, as far as we know. It seems that, in Brazil and throughout the Southern Hemisphere, these crocodiles were filling ecological niches held by dinosaurs in other parts of the world.