Crocodile is an immemorial reptile that date backs more than 200 million years to the Triassic period. Crocodile co-existed with dinosaurs for about 160 million years until about 66 million years ago, when an asteroid about 10 kilometers in diameter struck the Earth, causing the “Cretaceous-Paleogene” extinction event, the fifth known mass extinction event on Earth.

In this extinction event, about 70 percent of all species on Earth disappeared, but crocodiles were lucky enough to survive, and they still exist on the modern Earth. So it’s kind of curious, if crocodile was a dinosaur-period species, how did they survive the Great extinction and survive until now? Let’s talk about this topic.

About 66 million years ago, when the asteroid hit the Earth, it produced a powerful shock wave, which triggered global earthquakes, tsunamis and volcanic eruptions. At the same time, the kinetic energy in the violent impact carried by the asteroid was converted into heat in a very short time, and then a huge explosion occurred. It’s about 100 trillion tons of TNT exploding at the same time.

As a direct result of the nuclear winter, plants on land and algae in the ocean are unable to photosynthesize effectively, so the food chain in nature collapses from the bottom up.

In fact, what really caused the mass extinction of animals, including dinosaurs, in the Cretaceous-Paleogene extinction event was the collapse of the food chain, that is, they died out because they couldn’t find enough food. So how did crocodiles survive this mass extinction? The answer is simple: They are particularly resistant to hunger.

Crocodiles are carnivores, and normally, crocodiles use a energy-saving hunting method, they lurk in the area where prey are likely to be for a long time, and when the time is ripe, they will attack, so that they can greatly reduce the energy consumption of hunting.

But this way of hunting has a drawback, that is, they do not guarantee that they will catch prey every day, which will cause crocodiles often in a situation of a full meal and be hungry for several times.

However, crocodiles have long been able to starve for long periods of time. For one thing, crocodiles have a low basal metabolic rate, and when they are still (which is their normal), they need little energy to maintain their normal physiological activities.

On the other hand, crocodiles also have a strong digestive system, they can eat the equivalent of about 20% of their body weight in one sitting, their stomach acid is strong, and they can regulate their PH to adapt to different types of food. In addition to the common proteins, fats and carbohydrates, crocodiles can also digest bones, carapels and keratin. To “squeeze” as much nutrition out of the food as possible.

In addition, crocodiles themselves are also poikilotherms, they do not need to consume a lot of energy to maintain a constant body temperature as warm-blooded animals, which undoubtedly further reduces the energy consumption of crocodiles. According to biologists researches, the same biomass of crocodiles consume energy, even less than 1/10 of the warm-blooded animals.

It has been observed that crocodiles can go months without eating after a full meal. And in extreme cases, some have gone three years without eating.

You know, the nuclear winter that the asteroid created was pretty scary, but its duration is not imagined long. In the past days, scientists using different computer models to simulate it for many times, the simulation results show that the duration of the “nuclear winter” is only a few months, the longest will not exceed 10 years. With the crocodile’s strong anti-hunger ability, Some of them will be lucky enough to survive.

In addition, the habitat of crocodiles is wet areas such as lakes, rivers, swamps, and mountain streams, and the terrain of these areas is usually relatively low. During the “nuclear winter”, the organic matter left behind after the death of a large number of organisms will accumulate in these low-lying areas, and then nourish a large number of microorganisms, which will become food for small animals such as fishes and shrimps.

Although the energy provided by small fish and shrimp is not much, but for crocodiles, only a little food can survive for a long time, so this also increases the possibility of survival of crocodiles in the “nuclear winter” to a certain extent.

In summary, it can be seen that it is with the starveling ability, some crocodiles have been able to escape the great extinction and survive until now.

It is worth mentioning that dinosaurs are not all extinct, because scientists have found through long-term research that birds on the modern earth are actually evolved from small theropod dinosaurs, so a more rigorous statement should be that the dinosaurs extinct in the “Cretaceous – Paleogene extinction event” are actually “non-bird dinosaurs.”

Question: I think you’ve done a lot of modeling of prehistoric crocodiles?

Answer: We have made modern animatronic crocodile models, such as prehistoric Sarcosuchus models, alligator models, saltwater crocodile models and so on. If you want a crocodile, we can restore it in 1:1 size.

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