Archosaurs (ark-OH-sores) are the group of animals that include crocodilians, birds, and their closest relatives. Archosaurs first evolved some time around the early Triassic Period as small, lizard-sized, crocodilian-looking reptiles. One of the later kinds was Postosuchus, which fed on early dinosaurs like Coelophysis. Archosauria is currently divided into two groups; Pseudosuchia (Crocodilians and all Archosaurs closer to Crocodilians than Birds) and Avemetatarsalia (Birds and all Archosaurs closer to birds than to Crocodilians). Possibly the first true dinosaur was Lagosuchus, a rabbit-sized reptile that probably fed on small mammals, reptiles, and insects. Archosaurs are some of the most successful reptiles to have ever ruled the Earth, being in the form of dinosaurs, which have ruled the Earth for 251 million years.
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Archosaurs are some of the most successful animals to have ever lived, and also some of the most diverse. They come in the form of the large, scaly crocodilians, which are some of the oldest animals alive today. They also appear as the feathery, beaked birds, which make up the only living dinosaurs. They are also found in the forms of non-avian dinosaurs and pterosaurs. There are two major dinosaur clades; the ornithiscians, which consisted of the ceratopsians, hadrosaurs, pachycephalosaurs, and ankylosaurs, and the Saurischians, which consisted of the theropods and sauropods. The pterosaurs were the first vertebrates to use flight, and came in two groups, the tail/tailless, and the crested/non-crested.
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