Nothing “pseudo” about the Pseudosuchia—members of this extraordinary clade thunder again into the pages of The Anatomical Record

Abstract

Some animal groups have the right to ask the press for a do-over: “killer” whales, while clearly not vegans, are family-oriented giants who show caring and compassion; guinea “pigs,” while a bit pudgy in appearance, are rodents and in no evolutionary way cousins of pigs; likewise, prairie “dogs” are not related to a human's best friend and are rather cousins of New York City's formidable sewer rats; and the only flying “foxes” are probably the poor critters that were scared to death being hunted by hordes of English nobles, with such animals actually being fruit bats of the order Chiroptera. And, Pseudosuchia is also disrespectfully named, damning a host of varied reptiles to be labeled as some sort of “less than” or “false” relatives of crocodiles when they are not.

First off, a disclaimer: the authors of this editorial were weaned in the study of primates, that is, humans and our kin, monkeys, apes, and all historical relatives. Studying their history is, truthfully, not that difficult. Basically, everything revolves around us and who is most like us. Direct human-like relatives started to come about likely during the Miocene epoch, some 8–10 mya, and all of our primate-like relatives came creeping out from under tree stumps when the non-avian dinosaurs died out and mammals took over around 65 mya in the late Cretaceous. Easy stuff, really.

Now, when it gets to who's who in the world of reptiles and their relatives—that is another story, and one you really have to be “in-the-know” to really know. Reptiles and the varied cousins began their path sometime in the remarkable Triassic period of the Mesozoic era that started some 251 million years ago (mya) at the end of the Permian Period of the Paleozoic Era (for a glimpse into the extraordinary diversity of life forms in the Triassic see the recent Anatomical Record Special Issue, “The Dawn of an Era: New Contributions on Comparative and Functional Anatomy of Triassic Tetrapods,” Pinheiro, Pretto, Kerber, 2024; Laitman & Smith, 2024). The term “Pseudosuchia” was created by German paleontologist Karl Alfred von Zittel in 1887–1890 (see Von Zittel, 1901) and used to identify a grouping of somewhat, or superficially, “crocodile-like” (pseudos meaning false, souchos meaning crocodile in ancient Greek) prehistoric Triassic reptiles of the clade Archosauria. The term Pseudosuchia was used to differentiate these superficially “crocodile-like” archosaurs from the more “bird-like” archosaurs often referred to as Avemetatarsalia. Over the years since the clade was anointed, numerous changes have occurred in fossil reptilian taxonomy and phylogeny. Groups have crept in and swam out; indeed, today, true crocodilians are frequently defined as a subset of Pseudosuchia (for a detailed dining experience on all things crocodilian, see the recent Anatomical Record Special Issue, The Age of Crocodilians and their kin: Their Anatomy, Physiology and Evolution, Holliday & Schachner, 2022; Laitman & Smith, 2022). So, there you have it: groups that were originally thought to be “false” crocodiles were originally the reason for creating the Pseudosuchia, but now true crocodiles are put within Pseudosuchia. Got it; never-mind. Those who know can argue about it at their toothy, reptile meetings, yet seem to agree (more or less) on which fossil bones go into which museum drawers.

Misnomers to the side, pseudosuchians—whomever gets placed in them—have been around a long, long while and contain an extraordinary diversity of taxa past and present. This cornucopia of all things pseudosuchian is beautifully on display in this month's special issue of The Anatomical Record, “Recent Advances in Pseudosuchia Paleobiology and Systematics.” The issue has been Guest edited by a trio of pseudosuchia-philes who have long had a love for piecing together the past of these extraordinary animals: Mariana Valéria de Araújo Sena and Jorge Cubo, both from the Centre de recherche en paléontologie, Sorbonne Université, in the incomparable city of Paris; and Holly Noelle Woodward from the Department of Anatomy and Cell Biology, Oklahoma State University Center for Health Sciences at the also fascinating all-American city of Tulsa, Oklahoma (Sena et al., 2025) (Figure 1). These investigators represent the modern multifaceted species of scientists who blend their research on comparative biology, bone histology, and physiology (often published in our journal; see, e.g., de Margerie et al., 2004; Rainwater et al., 2022; Cubo et al., 2025; Heck & Woodward, 2025; Woodward, Aubier, de Sena, & Cubo, 2025) with their intense examination of fossil remains to reconstruct species and their pathways. The papers in this issue came from a core of presentations at a July 2023 symposium organized by the trio entitled “Paleohistological Inferences of Paleobiological Traits in Pseudosuchia” held at the International Congress of Vertebrate Morphology in Cairns, Australia. Co-author of this editorial, Heather Smith, pulled herself away from shrimps on the barbie, enthralled by the pseudosuchia tales, and opened the door to directing their science towards our journal. Co-author, Jeff Laitman, sealed the deal with Professors Cubo and Sena at their Paris dwellings at the legendary Sorbonne, using his ancestral Gallic charm to convince them that their beloved pseudosuchians would be most at home within the fossil friendly pages of The Anatomical Record.

From who they were, to how they moved, to how their bodies morphed and changed during ontogeny and throughout their evolutionary history, to their thermo-physiology, to, of course, their phylogenetic relationships, this novel Special Issue drills down into the world of the pseudosuchians. So, even if you are not up on all the intricacies of reptilian and archosaurian classification, paleobiology, and systematics you will enjoy and learn from this novel special issue. And, you will emerge wanting to rename the “pseudo-suchians” the “axio-suchians,” that is, the “worthy” suchians. All of the “killer” whales, “flying” foxes, guinea “pigs,” and other disrespected vertebrates are already cheering!

Jeffrey T. Laitman: Writing – original draft; conceptualization; investigation; project administration. Heather F. Smith: Writing – review and editing; conceptualization; project administration.