AMPHIBISUCHIA (Crocmanders)
On first inspection, the crocamanders seem to be a surviving lineage of giant Temnospondyles, and archaic amphibian lineage that by all regards died out in the Early Cretaceous of Australia. But looks can be deceiving.From their scanty fossil record, it seems that at some point in the Miocene a group of Cryptobranchid salamanders, related to the RL's Hellbenders and Giant Salamanders, started to grow larger, developing broader skulls and mouths, and fed on larger prey. With the coming of the Ice Age, the ancestors of the crocamanders soon found their main potential competitors, the crocodilians and mosasaurs, driven south by dropping temperatures, allowing them to evolve into “coldwater crocs”, and North America’s largest aquatic predator for much of the Pleistocene.
However, warming temperatures soon proved disastrous for the Crocamanders, as mosasaurs and crocodiles soon spread back over their former range, and the overall environmental change dealt an almost crippling blow.
Today, crocamanders are represented by only 6 species in 2 genera in North America and northern Eurasia. These include the dwarf crocomanders, animals not much bigger than RL's hellbenders, common over the great plains region, with a related species in the east; the allegheny gator, a large species approaching 7 feet, which has relict populations scattered in cold streams and rivers in the Appalachian and Ozark mountains; And the great crocomander, the largest living species at 10 feet, which seems to be mostly confined to Lake Champlain, with unverified reports from the Great Lakes region.
