Prestosuchus (Wild Safari by Safari Ltd.)

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Safari Ltd’s 2019 slate of releases made a lot of wishes come true, especially where up-to-date versions of popular dinosaurs are concerned. But for me, the most exciting release was the Triassic pseudosuchian Prestosuchus. It’s pretty rare that Safari makes Triassic animals–currently, the only other genera they offer from this period are Coelophysis and Postosuchus. I personally think that the Triassic is the most interesting period of the Mesozoic, so I was very excited to see this Prestosuchus, the first plastic version of the genus ever made. Let’s briefly get acquainted with the animal and its setting, and then see how the toy holds up!

During the Middle Triassic, about 240 million years ago, the continents were all smashed together into a landmass called Pangaea, and what is now the southern Brazilian state of Rio Grande do Sul lay alongside what is now Namibia in southwestern Africa. New ecosystems had emerged after the devastating end-Permian extinction, but they didn’t quite look like the ones that would show up later in the Mesozoic. True dinosaurs and pterosaurs were probably not around yet, but some small dinosaur-like animals had evolved. There weren’t true mammals, either, but plenty of cynodonts and other therapsids were running around, and some of them were likely hairy. There were probably giant amphibians and a variety of reptiles with no modern relatives. True crocodiles wouldn’t show up for another 100 million years, but Prestosuchus chiniquensis was on the scene.

Prestosuchus was probably the largest animal in its environment, a member of the crocodile stem-group (meaning that it shares a more recent common ancestor with crocodiles than with birds, but all living crocodiles share an even more recent common ancestor). Tens of millions of years before dinosaurs grew to huge sizes, these ancient croc relatives were the apex predators on land. If it hadn’t been for a climate-related mass extinction at the end of the Triassic, maybe they would have continued to be! Prestosuchus was a very large animal, 6 or 7 meters long, or roughly the length of a large great white shark (although not as heavy). This toy is about 25 cm long if you follow its spinal column, making it roughly 1:20-1:25 scale.

The head is deep with a somewhat bulbous snout, reminiscent of some later theropod dinosaurs. The number, size, and shape of the teeth agree with the known specimens. The skull of Prestosuchus shows a very dramatic constriction of the snout in front of the eyes, which probably helped expand the forward field of view. The constriction looks less dramatic on the figure, which strikes me as reasonable, as at least some of that space would have been filled with muscle and other soft tissues.

The legs are underneath the body, more like a dinosaur or mammal than a modern crocodile. This stance reflects an animal with an efficient gait that probably chased its prey at least some of the time. The hands and feet each have five clawed digits, which is likely correct but impossible to know for certain given current remains. Whereas modern crocodiles have only three clawed digits, other stem-crocodiles often have five, as do many other early archosaurs.

The skin is crocodile-like, but not too much so. As far as I can tell, no scales are known from Prestosuchus, but as a land-based, running predator, it would not be as heavily armored as a modern crocodile. [EDIT: In fact, osteoderms are known from Prestosuchus and this figure depicts them accurately. Thanks to the sculptor, Doug Watson, for alerting me to a paper in which they are described.] The coloration is coffee-brown on top, fading to a medium brown on the flanks and a creamy white underside, with irregular black blotches interspersed. As is typical with Safari, some elements of the paint application look hurried, perhaps a necessary trade-off for an affordable line of figures. The color scheme is attractive and vibrant, brighter than you would expect from a standard modern croc. Funny thing about modern crocs, though: like most mammals, they have lost at least one cone-type opsin (light receptor protein), so while they have excellent night vision, their color vision isn’t very good. A Triassic stem-crocodile would likely have been more color-attuned, and as a general rule animal groups with better color vision (monkeys, birds, frogs) have more potential to be colorful than animal groups with worse color vision (other mammals, modern crocs). The color scheme is somewhat reminiscent of Safari’s Acrocanthosaurus, but given how distant the two animals are in space, time, and scale, there’s not much reason to display them side-by-side anyway.

This attractive and accurate-as-possible-given-what-we-know Prestosuchus is a welcome addition to Safari’s range, and helps represent the strangest, most neglected period of the Mesozoic. The only gripe I have with it is a lack of contemporaries to display it with. Apart from that, I recommend it to both adult kids and regular kids, and I hope Safari makes some companion pieces before too long! You can buy it from their website or at nicer toy stores everywhere.