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To: Thoro
That's not really true. Present day lizards are not dinosaurs. Dinosaurs and current day lizards both share a common reptilian ancestor.

Um, no, there is zero evidence that crocodiles are decendants. Thereis only a false theory, evolution, that makes that claim.

There is ZERO evidence they are decendants. Besides, we have fossil crocodiles from back then, too. That means they were one of those terrible lizards!

112 posted on 05/12/2003 4:35:23 AM PDT by RaceBannon
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To: RaceBannon
Um, no, there is zero evidence that crocodiles are decendants. Thereis only a false theory, evolution, that makes that claim.

No, it doesn't. (If you mean, best as I can make out, that crocs are supposed to be descendents of dinosaurs.)

Crocs have long been understood to have arisen within the "thecodonts," a group that also, but only later and separately, gave rise to the dinosaurs, and possibly to birds as well. There remains controversy in the case of birds as to whether they evolved from dinosaurs, or from the ancestors of dinosaurs, but there is no such controversy as regards crocs, which have a pretty good fossil record. They originated before dinosaurs split off, and are not, therefore, descended from them.

But crocs do (as I mentioned in another message) share a more recent common ancestor with dinosaurs (and with birds) than they do with other living reptiles. In fact the ancestors of snakes and lizards, and nearly all modern reptiles save the crocs, seem to have split off very early from the lineages leading to thecodonts (and thus crocs and dinosaurs) and to the reptilian line that evolved into mammals. IOW the last common ancestors of crocociles and lizards is probably found among the earliest or "stem" reptiles, whereas the last common ancestor of birds and crocodiles lived well over a hundred million years later (IIRC).

127 posted on 05/12/2003 7:46:41 AM PDT by Stultis
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