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Gracilisuchus
Sign in to saveGracilisuchus (meaning "slender crocodile") is an extinct genus of tiny pseudosuchian (a group which includes the ancestors of crocodilians) from the Late Triassic of Argentina. It contains a single species, G. stipanicicorum, which is placed in the clade Suchia, close to the ancestry of crocodylomorphs. Both the genus and the species were first described by Alfred Romer in 1972.
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Encyclopedic overview
21 sectionsContents
- Discovery
- Discovery of the holotype
- Additional specimens and description
- Description
- Skull
- Vertebrae
- Limbs
- Osteoderms
- Classification
- Interpretation as an ornithosuchid
- Reidentification as a non-ornithosuchid
- Inclusion in the Suchia and Crurotarsi
- Phylogenetic "limbo"
- Formation of the Gracilisuchidae
- Palaeobiology
- Posture
- Palaeoecology
- Stratigraphic context
- Notes
- References
- External links
Gracilisuchus (meaning "slender crocodile") is an extinct genus of tiny pseudosuchian (a group which includes the ancestors of crocodilians) from the Late Triassic of Argentina. It contains a single species, G. stipanicicorum, which is placed in the clade Suchia, close to the ancestry of crocodylomorphs. Both the genus and the species were first described by Alfred Romer in 1972.
==Discovery== ===Discovery of the holotype=== A four-month expedition spanning 1964 and 1965 in the Ischigualasto-Villa Unión Basin of La Rioja Province, Argentina was conducted by Alfred Romer and his colleagues, who consisted of researchers from the Museum of Comparative Zoology (MCZ) at Harvard University. While the first two months of the expedition were unfruitful, excavations near the Chañares River and the Gualo River, soon uncovered specimens belonging to a wide variety of tetrapod groups. Among these was the skeleton of a small suchian archosaur, discovered about north of the Chañares River. The skeleton was stored at the La Plata Museum (MLP), which had supported the expedition, under the specimen number MLP 64-XI-14-11. The specimen has since been transferred to the Museum of Paleontology at the National University of La Rioja (PULR), where it bears the specimen number PULR 08.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Gracilisuchus” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.
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