Crocodilian Fossil at the Jurassic Coast

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Crocodilians, thalattosuchians, crocodylomorphs — different words, and the distinctions clutter the discussion. I will stick with crocodilian. Darwin's disciples are excited about a fossil for one of these critters. but it throws off their evolutionary storyline. The tale is that a land animal with four limbs in the Triassic period changed into crocodilians.

There was enough of the new discovery available for scientists to identify it and give it a name: Turnersuchus hingleyae. They say it is the only thalattocuchian from its geologic age.

Jurassic Coast of England, Flickr / Liam Eldret (CC BY 2.0)
There are some interesting speculations about T. hingleyae, including how its skull indicates that it could bite quickly and powerfully. A suggestion was made that it was a live bearer instead of egg layer, but there is no evidence to support this. Evolutionary speculation without evidence? Say it isn't so!

Vertebrate fossils of land-dwelling creatures have also been found in the same layers as this, one of which has characteristics of rapid burial. Other critters seem to have met the same fate, and the ages of rock layers is questionable because sedimentation rates were nowhere near constant — and they know it. Also of importance is how creatures suddenly appeared (no evolutionary history) with minor changes. They were designed for life in their ecological niches before getting buried by the Genesis Flood.
Fossil hunters working on the Jurassic coast of England discovered a new thalattosuchian fossil in 2017 (‘suchus’ is the Latinized form of the Greek ‘soukhos’; meaning crocodile). This extends the evolutionary narrative of this creature possibly back to the Late Triassic (Rhaetian) from the Early Jurassic. The account has recently been published in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.

Although comparatively short, this is not exactly easy reading. For those who want to venture onward, the rest of the article is buried at "A new ‘marine crocodile’ discovery on the Jurassic coast of England."