Reconstruction of Labrujasuchus expectatus, a new species of Shuvosauridae from Late Triassic rocks of Ghost Ranch, New Mexico
Art by Jorge Gonzalez, © NHMLAC Dinosaur Institute.
Evolution, proceeding without a plan and lacking any sense of direction, can produce some truly bizarre creatures which, despite their appearance, survived perfectly well in the environments in which they evolved. Indeed, it would be bizarre to suppose otherwise, given that natural selection favours those forms that work well enough to survive and reproduce over those less well fitted to do so. To suppose otherwise would rival creationism for irrationality.
In this post, I’ll deal with a bizarre distant relative of the crocodiles; in the next, I’ll write about a strange theropod dinosaur from 70 million years ago that comes close to what any creationist might imagine a transitional species between dinosaurs and birds should look like.
Creationism is, of course, itself the product of an evolutionary process, forced into ever more bizarre forms by the hostile environment of scientific evidence. Modern creationism has therefore, by a similar process, become almost as bizarre as the life forms it is forced to deny in order to survive.
The sad thing is that creationists are denied the wonder of the truth about our planet as revealed in increasingly astonishing detail by science, because the facts must be waved aside and denied in order to cling to the childishly simplistic belief in magic and a world full of evil conspirators diligently working to trick them into changing their minds.
Who, for example, could have predicted that a distant relative of the crocodiles walked on two legs, had tiny arms, and had a toothless mouth tipped with a beak? It is almost as bizarre as the mental gymnastics creationists need to perform to dismiss it and force-fit the evidence into the predetermined conclusion that it must have been magically created within the last few thousand years and then allowed to go extinct for no apparent purpose — or that the evidence must either have been forged, misinterpreted or planted to test or deceive us.
Nevertheless, this creature, Labrujasuchus expectatus, did exist about 212 million years ago, in the Late Triassic, and its description is the subject of a recent paper in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. Its fossilised remains were unearthed in Late Triassic rocks at the Hayden Quarry, Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, USA, by a team of palaeontologists led by Dr Alan H. Turner of Stony Brook University, New York, USA, with colleagues including Dr Nathan D. Smith of the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County, Los Angeles, California, USA.
To add insult to injury for creationists, this find fills one of those beloved gaps into which creationists try to force fit their creator god. The gap was that between two earlier discovered shuvosaurs from the region. It's discovery was thus a predicted by the Theory of Evolution, not by a book of Bronze Age mythology.
Shuvosauridae — crocodile-line reptiles that looked like ostrich dinosaurs. Shuvosauridae is an extinct family of Late Triassic archosaurs belonging to the crocodile-line branch of the archosaur family tree, the Pseudosuchia. That makes them distant relatives of modern crocodiles and alligators, not dinosaurs, although their appearance could easily mislead anyone expecting crocodile relatives to look vaguely crocodile-like.The paper in the Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology was accompanied by a press release from the Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County:
The typical shuvosaurid body plan was anything but crocodilian in the modern sense. They were lightly built, long-necked, long-legged animals that walked on their hind legs, had reduced forelimbs, and, in the best-known forms, toothless jaws tipped with a beak. In overall outline, they converged strikingly on the body plan later seen in ostrich-like theropod dinosaurs, especially the ornithomimosaurs, despite being on the opposite side of the archosaur family tree.
That makes them a particularly good example of convergent evolution: unrelated lineages, faced with similar functional opportunities or constraints, arriving independently at similar anatomical solutions. In this case, the crocodile-line shuvosaurids evolved a bipedal, small-armed, beaked body form that would later be repeated in bird-line dinosaurs.
The group includes Shuvosaurus inexpectatus from Texas, Effigia okeeffeae from New Mexico, Sillosuchus longicervix from Argentina, Sonselasuchus cedrus from Arizona, and the newly described Labrujasuchus expectatus from Ghost Ranch, New Mexico. The North American forms are mostly known from Late Triassic rocks of the south-western United States, especially the Chinle and Dockum formations, which preserve a remarkable record of archosaur evolution before dinosaurs became the dominant large land animals.
Their diet is not known with certainty for every member of the family, but the toothless beak and jaw structure of Effigia suggest a specialised herbivore feeding on relatively soft plant material. That, too, is a reminder that crocodile-line archosaurs in the Triassic were far more diverse than modern crocodiles might lead us to imagine. Some were armour-plated herbivores, some were apex predators, some were aquatic or semi-aquatic, and some, like the shuvosaurids, were bipedal, beaked oddities experimenting with a body plan more familiar from dinosaurs and birds.
Shuvosauridae therefore illustrates one of the great lessons of the Triassic: evolution was not marching towards modern forms, nor following a script. It was producing multiple experiments in anatomy and ecology, many of which left no living descendants. The shuvosaurids were one of those evolutionary experiments — successful for a time, bizarre by modern expectations, and entirely inexplicable as the product of any simple-minded notion that animals were created as fixed, recognisable “kinds”.
New Species of Bizarre, Bipedal, Toothless Crocodile Relative from the Triassic Discovered
Unearthed in Ghost Ranch, New Mexico, Labrujasuchus expectatus — the ‘Witch Croc’ — highlights the weirdness of life during the dawn of the dinosaurs and the legacy and ongoing discoveries at an iconic site 20 years into excavation
Los Angeles, CA (May 26, 2026) — In the Triassic, the modern animals we know were just beginning to diversify into a menagerie of forms and body plans that rhyme with the lifestyles of extinct and living animals better known to the public, but nested in groups that ended up taking wildly divergent paths. Case in point: Labrujasuchus expectatus.
Described in Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology, Labrujasuchus looked very much like ornithomimosaurs, a group of bipedal dinosaurs from the Cretaceous with body plans similar to those of modern ostriches. But Labrujasuchus comes from the branch of archosaurs that led to crocodiles, famously four-legged and full of teeth. The newly-described Labrujasuchus navigated the world on two legs with tiny arms and a toothless mouth tipped in a beak—about as far away from a crocodile as possible.
In the Triassic, you can expect the unexpected.
Among the primordial Star Wars bar denizens of the epoch were the lagerpetids, bipedal dinosaur cousins whose relatives would take to the skies as pterosaurs; the funky tree-dwelling Drepanosaurus, with a single tree-sloth-like claw on its hands and a little one on its prehensile tail; and the aquatic reptilian mini-tank, Vancleavea, to name a few. Labrujasuchus expectatus, the newest identified member of Shuvosauridae—a group of ancient crocodile relatives with body plans resembling bipedal, small-armed theropod dinosaurs—stepped into this world of bizarre reptiles with both feet.
One of only five identified species, Labrujasuchus expectatus fills the gap between two earlier discovered shuvosaurs from the region, an evolutionary link paleontologists knew was waiting to be found. The discovery was the expected unexpected, which inspired the species name ‘expactatus’. The witchy genus moniker, Labrujasuchus, references the ‘Ranchos de los Brujos,' or Ranch of the Witches, an old Spanish name for Ghost Ranch, and the Greek word Σοῦχος (suchus) meaning “crocodile”.
Video and 3D model by Jorge GonzalezWe see a lot of the successful strategies for modern animals and non-avian dinosaurs first arise in the Triassic, and shuvosaurs are a great example of that convergent evolution. Bipedalism is certainly a unique path for crocodile relatives to take, but it’s a path well-trod by dinosaurs and later birds. It obviously worked for these animals.
Dr. Alan H. Turner, lead author.
Department of Anatomical Sciences
Stony Brook University
Stony Brook, New York, U.S.A.
Legend has it, the local rancheros gave the site the name ‘Ranchos de Los Brujos’ to keep folks away from the cattle-rustling operations of the Archuleta brothers. We wanted to give a nod to that colorful history, and honor the incredible role Ghost Ranch has played in expanding our view of the Triassic. We also wanted to highlight how the fossil record works—finding one shuvosaur from earlier in the Triassic and one from later meant that we paleontologists knew there were probably more from in-between waiting to be discovered and described.
Dr. Nathan D. Smith, co-author
The Dinosaur Institute
Natural History Museum of Los Angeles County
Los Angeles, California, U.S.A.
Marking 20 Years of Collaboration at Ghost RanchThis summer is the 20th anniversary of Nate and his colleagues coming out to do excavations at Ghost Ranch, and we’re so proud to play a central role in making that incredible research possible. Whether visitors are seeking its iconic landscape and spiritual healing or digging into ancient history, Ghost Ranch is a place like nowhere else on the planet. We’re looking forward to collaborating with Dr. Turner, Dr. Smith, and all their colleagues to continue sharing this extraordinary place for years to come.
Joanne Lefrak, not an author of the paper.
Director of Experience and Social Impact
Ghost Ranch Education and Retreat Center
New Mexico, USA.
With its bizarre assortment of creatures, the Triassic can feel like it belongs to another Earth entirely, but the body plans of long-gone weirdos reverberate through time, mirroring our modern weirdos, who are often in danger of going extinct. In short, understanding the Triassic past helps us better understand and protect our present, and perhaps nowhere on Earth gives a better view of that long-gone epoch than Ghost Ranch. Home to four quarries excavated by paleontologists for decades, Ghost Ranch continues to produce some of the most exquisitely produced fossils from the epoch.
Made famous by Georgia O’Keeffe’s dramatic paintings of its colorful badlands, Ghost Ranch hosts a multi-year, ongoing excavation project co-led by Dr. Smith at NHMLAC’s Dinosaur Institute, to collect Late Triassic creatures from the Hayden Quarry.
Publication:
So, once again, we have evidence of an extinct animal exactly where evolutionary biology says we should expect to find it: in rocks of the right age, in the right geological context, with anatomical features that make sense when understood in terms of descent with modification, ecological opportunity and convergent evolution.
Labrujasuchus expectatus was not a modern crocodile, nor a dinosaur, nor some impossible hybrid. It was a crocodile-line archosaur from a time when that branch of the archosaur family tree was experimenting with a remarkable variety of body forms. Some were heavily armoured, some were top predators, some were herbivores, and some, like the shuvosaurids, evolved a bipedal, beaked body plan that would later be echoed, independently, by bird-line dinosaurs.
There is nothing in that which creationism predicts, explains or illuminates. A doctrine based on the magical creation of fixed “kinds” a few thousand years ago has no rational place for a 212-million-year-old, toothless, two-legged crocodile-line reptile from the Late Triassic. It can only deny the evidence, misrepresent it, or pretend that the scientists who uncovered and described it are somehow part of a conspiracy against superstition.
Science, by contrast, does not need to force the fossil into a predetermined conclusion. It can place it in a testable framework of anatomy, stratigraphy, phylogeny and evolutionary history. That is why discoveries like Labrujasuchus are not embarrassing anomalies for science, but expected additions to a steadily improving picture of life’s deep past.
For creationism, every such fossil is another problem to be waved away. For evolutionary science, it is another piece of the puzzle falling into place.
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