La maldición del cocodrilo de Ricla SD

They have accompanied humans since the dawn of history Being feared and worshipped for their primitive appearance which recalls a time when mammals did not dominate the earth But have crocodiles really changed either The answer is not found in history books but much further back 165 million years ago the agricultural town of Ricla was a shallow sea In it lived bivalves ammonites mollusks and other astonishing animals But it was by no means a calm sea In it lived predators including a strange crocodile that looked like a dolphin For years the secrets of this fearsome Jurassic predator were on the verge of being lost to oblivion This is the story of a curse and the perseverance of a few researchers who fought against it The curse of the Ricla crocodile begins at the moment of its discovery In 1994 a major change was about to shake the town of Ricla The Ricla crocodile was almost run over by the bird But the paleontologists managed to rescue its skull at the last moment In previous exploration campaigns before the high-speed rail works They found nodules in which small bone fragments were visible Intrigued they decided to take them to the university Once in the lab the remains waited their turn to be prepared The process of cleaning and preparing fossils is always long and costly Sometimes it is necessary to use different methods both mechanical and chemical until the remains reveal the truth they are hiding Once again the crocodile's curse complicated things The nodules were much harder than the bones they contained And his preparation stretched over time But the hard effort was worth it Little by little the pieces fit together to form a skull But the overall appearance was unsettling It was undoubtedly a marine reptile and many specific aspects of its skull resembled those of crocodiles But was it really a crocodile What is a crocodile Everyone knows it's a crocodile although the truth is none of us really know what a crocodile is The image we have in mind is of a group of a four-legged animal with short legs a long tail and a flattened head And that fits very well with the image of modern crocodiles Crocodiles belong to a group of animals that we call archosaurs Within this group of archosaurs in addition to crocodiles there are also dinosaurs and pterosaurs What are the famous prehistoric flying reptiles Current crocodiles are all amphibious in their lifestyle That is they spend much of their time in water but they can also live on land In fact all the eggs are laid on land and the first thing a crocodile sees when it is born is the land So many questions caused the crocodile to be kept away in the museum for a long time The curse even extended to the researchers who set out to study it There were several failed attempts to discover what kind of crocodile were facing Would someone be able to break the curse I didn't really know what they were talking about I started studying the crocodile and didn't even know its reputation It was not yet clear what scientific importance it would later have And suddenly people started telling me about the curse to be careful with the crocodile Then it was when I started to find out about the story that this fossil was carrying on its back The crocodile group to which Rikla's crocodile belongs were fully adapted to aquatic life Then they had a set of characteristics that are not seen in other crocodiles like those we have now It seems that crocodiles are a much more diverse group than we thought A tree whose roots are anchored more than 200 million years ago and of which only a small sample of its last branches has survived to our days But what was that diversity really like Crocodiles today although a very popular animal can be called living fossils Only small remnants of groups that were once very diverse remain They emerged at the end of the Triassic about 220-230 million years ago around the same time as the dinosaurs And throughout all that time there has been a lot of diversity and different lineages and only a small fraction of all those lineages remains today They managed to conquer ecological niches that later they have not been able to achieve An example is the marine environment another example were crocodiles that were not carnivores but were insectivorous crocodiles Even it has been proposed that they were plant-eaters that is they formed a complex group that existed both on land and in the sea and part of the marine environment they managed to conquer all ecosystems but never the aerial ecosystem For now at least it is not known that crocodiles could fly The Ricla crocodile is characterized among other things by having a very long and thin face with a lot of teeth a bunch of small teeth then with these teeth that fit perfectly together It could catch fish fast and small prey meaning it would have a fish-eating diet The eyes are another key feature of this crocodile Unlike modern crocodiles which have their eyes on the top of their skulls this crocodile would have them completely sideways and very large That is it would also make it easier for them to see underwater They had fins instead of legs They also had a long tail very similar to that of sharks which would help them propel themselves through the water What's most impressive well the first thing is that it's a new genus and species there is no other crocodile like this in the world at least for now What does the specimen the individual the taxon the most primitive one represent that is it would be the first in its lineage It is very important because until now in Spain there had not been such a complete marine crocodile After nearly two decades the curse has finally been broken First the crocodile was rescued from the bird's path Second he managed to be freed from the rock that was hiding him Thirdly he found someone who was his equal and could study him But the paleontologists didn't want this curse to be forgotten so they engraved it forever in their name The cursed crocodile of Ricla the maledictus of Ricla The cursed crocodile of Ricla Goodbye crocodile After the crocodile Goodbye That's all Goodbye