King of the Crocodylians: The Paleobiology of Deinosuchus

Toward the end of the Age of Dinosaurs, during a time known as the Late Cretaceous, a new type of giant predator appeared along the southern coasts of North America. It was a huge species of crocodylian called Deinosuchus. Neither a crocodile nor an alligator, it was an ancestor of both modern groups; it reached weights of many tons and it had some features unique to its own species. Average-sized individuals were bigger than the carnivorous dinosaurs with which they co-existed; the largest specimens were the size of a T-rex. King of the Crocodylians, the biography of these giant beasts, tells the long history of their discovery and reports on new research about their makeup. The book also deals with the ancient life and geology of the coastal areas where Deinosuchus thrived, its competitors, and its prey, which probably included carnivorous dinosaurs. There is also detailed discussion of the methods used to determine the size of these giant animals, the dating of the fossils, the nature of their living environments, and how we know who ate whom 80 million years ago.

David R. Schwimmer, Professor of Paleontology at Columbus State University in Georgia, is an expert on the Late Cretaceous paleontology of the southeastern United States. Author of many papers on Cretaceous vertebrates, he is co-author (with W. J. Frazier) of Regional Stratigraphy of North America, which won the award for "Best Reference Book of the Year" from the Geoscience Information Society.