When I saw that the National Geographic Society would be publishing a book about SuperCroc, I thought that it would be a large book for adults, filled with information about Sarcosuchus. I was more than just a little bit disappointed when I saw that the book was a small picture book for young readers. My disappointment did not last long, however, once I opened the book and began reading.
Christopher Sloan is the Senior Editor for Art at National Geographic Magazine and is also the author of the children's book Feathered Dinosaurs, also published by the National Geographic Society. SuperCroc is full of lavish photographs and illustrations which captivate the reader.
The introduction to the book was written by Dr. Paul Sereno, who discovered the remains of Sarcosuchus that are the focus of the Discovery Channel program about Sarcosuchus and a travelling exhibit. Sereno's adventures in the Tenere Desert in Niger, where the Sarcosuchus fossils were found, are detailed. (Sereno and half his field crew venture into the desert with only a four-day supply of water while they search for fossils and wait for the rest of the crew to arrive with large containers that each held 800 gallons of water.) Sereno's crew collected over 20 tons of fossils, including several new species of crocodilians, a dozen new species of dinosaur and many other fossils, including plants.
SuperCroc and the Origin of Crocodiles is very informative. It has a timeline showing when Sarcosuchus and other extinct crocodiles lived and maps indicating both the present-day location of where the fossils were found and the positions of the continents during the Mid and Late Cretaceous Period (145 to 65 million years ago).
I found the chapter "What is a Croc, Anyway?" very informative. Sloan discusses archosaurs and the relationship of crocodiles to birds and lizards and other archosaurs. He also discusses crocodilian physiology (including embryonic sex determination, "cold-bloodedness", and growth) and behaviour. A sidebar shows the size and relationships with extinct crocodile-like reptiles, extant (still living) crocodiles and other crocodyliforms. Another sidebar shows some of the extant species of crocodiles and describes how to tell the difference between gharials, crocodiles and alligators.
The chapter "Ankles and Armor: The Crocodile-Like Reptiles" discusses some of the distant crocodile relatives that lived during the Late Triassic Period (230 to 195 million years ago), such as the Phytosaurs, Aetosaurs, Rauisuchians, Poposaurs, and Spenosuchians. A sidebar entitled "Crocodilo-what?" outlines the relationships and names given to different groupings of crocodile relatives. This will help to straighten out some of the confusion over what is a member of the Crocodylotarsi, the Crocodyliformes and the Crocodilia.
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