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India | Environmental Management | Volume 14 Issue 5, May 2025 | Pages: 768 - 772
A Review on the Evolutionary Perspective of Snout Elongation in Extant Crocodilians
Abstract: The evolutionary morphology of snout elongation in extant crocodilians reflects a complex interplay of ecological adaptation, biomechanical constraints, and phylogenetic history. This review explores how craniofacial variations categorized into semi-altirostral, longirostral, platyrostral, and brevirostral morphotypes correlates with foraging strategies, hydrodynamic requirements, and habitat specialization. Emphasis on convergent and parallel evolution of longirostry and brevirostry across monophyletic and non-monophyletic lineages is also provided. Comparative biomechanical stresses and von Mises factors also highlighted for differences in bite force distribution between snout morphologies. Longirostrals show adaptations for ichthyophagy, while brevirostrals demonstrate secondarily derived traits largely suitable for terrestrial crushing of prey. We hypothesize that post-Cretaceous ecological filtering and spatio-trophic competition with dominant reptilian clades including Theropods shaped the morphological stasis and niche conservatism observed in extant Esuchians. Moreover, paleoenvironmental shifts during the Cenozoic further constrained the range and diversity of crocodilians. Despite their retention of plesiomorphic body plans, crocodilians demonstrate key evolutionary innovations in jaw shapes enabling resource partitioning and survival through mass extinctions. This review also synthesizes evolutionary ecology and biomechanical informations to propose a power cascade jaw width expansion in clade Crocodylia.
Keywords: craniofacial morphology, longirostry, brevirostry, convergent evolution, power cascade model
How to Cite?: Debanik Mukherjee, Mohan Singh, M. Vijay, Pulkit Sharma, "A Review on the Evolutionary Perspective of Snout Elongation in Extant Crocodilians", Volume 14 Issue 5, May 2025, International Journal of Science and Research (IJSR), Pages: 768-772, https://www.ijsr.net/getabstract.php?paperid=MS25512175033, DOI: https://dx.doi.org/10.21275/MS25512175033
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