Molecular and morphological phylogenies concur in indicating that the African lineages formerly referred to Crocodylus niloticus are the sister taxon the four Neotropical crocodiles (Crocodylus intermedius, C. moreleti, C. acutus and C. rhombifer), implying a transoceanic dispersal from Africa to America. So far the fossil record did not contribute to identify a possible African forerunner of the Neotropical species but, curiously, the oldest remains referred to the African C. niloticus are Quaternary in age, whereas the oldest American fossils of Crocodylus are older, being dated to the early Pliocene, suggesting that another species could be involved. We re-described, also thanks to CT imaging, the only well-preserved topotipic skull of Crocodylus checchiai Maccagno, 1947 from the late Miocene (Messinian) African site of As Sahabi in Libya. As previously suggested on the basis of late Miocene material from Tanzania, C. checchiai is a valid, diagnosable species. According to our phylogenetic analyses, C. checchiai is related to the Neotropical taxa and could be even located at the base of their radiation, therefore representing the missing link between the African and the American lineages. Extant crocodylians are represented by 25 species grouped into 9 genera 1. The most speciose and widespread genus is Crocodylus Laurenti, 1768 that hosts 12 species inhabiting a longitudinally very broad intertropical belt ranging from Australia to South Asia, to Africa and then America. The origin of Crocodylus was placed in the late Miocene (about 13.6-8.3 Ma) of Asia by Oaks 2 , on the basis of a time-calibrated species tree stemming from a DNA analysis, and recently reconstructed as Asian by Nicolai and Mazke 3 on the basis of historical biogeography models. Both the molecular 2,4,5 and the morphological/palaeontological 6-9 approaches, as well as the shared presence of parasites 10 concur in indicating that the origin of the American clade of Crocodylus should be sought in Africa. The four American species Crocodylus intermedius, C. moreleti, C. acutus and C. rhombiferare grouped together with the African Crocodylus niloticus Laurenti, 1768, which is placed at the base of the American branch. According to Meredith et al. 5 , the most parsimonious explanation that takes into consideration both the phylogenetic results and the fossil record of Crocodylus supports a relatively recent transAtlantic crossing of "C. niloticus" from Africa to America. The reason of the inverted commas placed by these authors around the name of Nile crocodile is related to the fact that the eastern and western clades of this species do not cluster together, but are arranged in paraphyly at the base of the American clade, a result shared by different authors applying different molecular techniques 2,4,5,11,12. Hekkala et al. 5 eventually proposed the resurrection of the name Crocodylus suchus Geoffroy Saint-Hilaire, 1807 for the western populations, keeping the name C. niloticus for the (predominantly) eastern populations that is directly at the ...

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The right to water is a social right because it requires the State to guarantee the enjoyment of the resource for all. In the last thirty years, the Italian legal system has dealt with harmonizing the regulation of the protection and management of water through a rethinking of public functions and tools for planning of uses and management of water resources. The work, after reconstructing the water as a human right, deals with the regulatory evolution towards water advertising. In the third and fourth sections, it deals with the problems of the organization of integrated water service and its organizational models. In the conclusions, the organizational aspects of the integrated water service are considered central, unjustly neglected, in the most recent debate. The structure of government levels (government) and private participation in water resource choices destined for human consumption (governance) are, in fact, decisive for the implementation of a democratic model in water management that today seems to be for the most recent national and regional regulatory choices formally close and yet far from the local model in a more adequate unitary form.