We thank Xu Xing for his invitation to submit this article and editorial work on it. Our thanks to Serjoscha Evers for discussions and his suggestions on an early version of this manuscript and to Darren Naish for discussion on Baryonyx. Eric Buffetaut is thanked for his review and helpful comments on an earlier version of the manuscript. We thank Scott Hartman and Matt van Rooijen for their generosity over the use of their artwork in figures 1 and 6 respectively. We thank Christiano Dal Sasso, José Ignacio Canudo, Ronan Allain, and Serjoscha Evers for kindly contributing photographs of specimens that were used for various figures.