Today, crocodiles cling only precariously to their tropical homelands. Lacking the appeal of fur-bearing mammals, they have a low popularity rating in conservation terms, and are still frequently treated only as dangerous vermin. Yet these largely unloved creatures are among the most remarkable of all so-called living fossils. Had they failed to survive into the modern world, their petrified bones would have been just as much a source of wonder and speculation as the skeletons of their close relatives, the dinosaurs.