Some clades get all the love. Dinosaurs are at the top of the list. For the past century and a half they have been the icons of lost worlds and extinctions, and the even greater variety of life that lived alongside them is often treated as a motley aggregation of “also-rans.” Crocs, in particular, have reason to be jealous. When a dinosaur impersonates a croc, it’s news, but when crocs steal a few pages from the dinosaur’s evolutionary playbook, no one seems to notice.

In 1998 news sources heralded the discovery of Suchomimus – the dinosaurian “crocodile mimic.” One of the bizarre spinosaurs, this fish-eating predator had a long, low skull full