The saltwater crocodile is a crocodilian native to saltwater habitats, brackish wetlands and freshwater rivers from India's east coast across Southeast Asia and the Sundaic region to northern Australia and Micronesia. It has been listed as Least Concern on the IUCN Red List since 1996. It was hunted for its skin throughout its range up to the 1970s, and is threatened by illegal killing and habitat loss. It is regarded as dangerous to humans.
Image: Saltwater Crocodile('Maximo')
Image: Female croc
Sweetheart, a saltwater crocodile from Finnis River in northern Australia proposed as Crocodilus pethericki in 1985
Saltwater crocodile skull from The Museum of Zoology, Saint Petersburg. Note the considerably more slender skull of a gharial in the background.
Crocodilia is an order of mostly large, predatory, semiaquatic reptiles known as crocodilians. They first appeared 94 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous period and are the closest living relatives of birds, as the two groups are the only known survivors of the Archosauria. Members of the order's total group, the clade Pseudosuchia, appeared about 250 million years ago in the Early Triassic period, and diversified during the Mesozoic era. The order Crocodilia includes the true crocodiles, the alligators and caimans, and the gharial and false gharial. Although the term crocodiles is sometimes used to refer to all of these, crocodilians is a less ambiguous vernacular term for members of this group.
Crocodilia
Restoration of early crocodylomorph Protosuchus
Skeletal mount of the giant crocodylian Deinosuchus from the Late Cretaceous of North America
Mounted skeleton and taxidermy of Nile crocodile