Crocodilians

Crocodilians are a family of species found in the Tropics of the Americas, Africa Asia and Australia. They live in or near water – rivers, lakes, wetlands and even salt water.

Generally, they are apex predators in their ecosystems with no natural predators. Having said this, as with every species, humans hunt them, and in many places this has pushed them close to the brink of extinction.

In the current age, there are 24 species, spread across 3 families and 8 genus. We also have a photo gallery with many ways to filter the crocodilians and this is at the bottom of the page click here to jump to it

So taking the genus in order

Caimenae is the sub-family, sitting below Aligatoridae (Alligatoridae being one of two clades in Crocodilia_. There are 3 genus

Caimen – A line of crocodilians that inhabit central and south America,

Specticaled caymen

Broad-snouted caiman by Tim Sagorski

Yacare caiman paul williams

Melanosuchus The black caimen is the only known living species from this Genus, and is found throughout the Amazon basin

Black caiman by Bernard Dupont

Paleosuchus is a south American group of Caimen

Cuviers dwarf caimen

Smooth-fronted caimen

The only other family below Alligatoridae, is the subfamily of Alligatorinae.

This includes only two species

American Alligator Chinese Aligator

American Alligator

Chinese aligator

Longirostres is the other clade to make up the Crocodilia family. The first sub- family is Crocodylidae

This contains 3 genus with the first being Crocodylus which is the family of true crocodiles.

This includes 14 living species as well as 5 known only from fossils (we will not discuss these fossil specimens in this page)

African nile crocodile

American crocodile

Borneo crocodile

Cuban Crocodile

Fresh water crocodile

Halls new guinea crocodile

Moreletts crocodile, Bernard Dupont

West African crocodile

The second genus is Mecistops which is the slender snouted crocodiles, with only 2 species

Central african slender snouted crocodile

Western slender snouted crocodile

The last (third) genus is Osteolemus

African dwarf crocodile

Osborn dwarf crocodile

The other sub -family is Gavialidae which includes 2 genus includes Gaviolis and Tomistona. Which we will deal with together as each only has one living species.

Gharial

False Gharial

Crocodile gallery – Filter and export