Saurosuchus
Sign in to saveSaurosuchus (meaning "lizard crocodile") is an extinct genus of large loricatan pseudosuchian archosaurs that lived in South America during the Late Triassic period. The first and holotype specimen was discovered in 1957 by Galileo J. Scaglia and Leocadio Soria in the strata of the Ischigualasto Formation in northwestern Argentina. The type and only species, S. galilei, was named in 1959 by Osvaldo A. Reig. Several specimens, including an adult and multiple subadults, have been discovered since.
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Encyclopedic overview
14 sectionsContents
- Discovery and naming
- Referred specimens
- Description
- Skull
- Vertebral column
- Pectoral and pelvic girdles
- Osteoderms
- Classification
- Paleobiology
- Paleoecology
- Contemporaneous fauna
- See also
- References
- External links
Saurosuchus (meaning "lizard crocodile") is an extinct genus of large loricatan pseudosuchian archosaurs that lived in South America during the Late Triassic period. The first and holotype specimen was discovered in 1957 by Galileo J. Scaglia and Leocadio Soria in the strata of the Ischigualasto Formation in northwestern Argentina. The type and only species, S. galilei, was named in 1959 by Osvaldo A. Reig. Several specimens, including an adult and multiple subadults, have been discovered since.
Saurosuchus is estimated to have measured in length and to have weighed up to , making it one of the largest "rauisuchians". Its skull was large, measuring up to , and was strongly convergent with that of large theropod dinosaurs. The skull was wider behind the eyes than in front of the eyes. Its neck was short and robust, and would have been powerfully muscled. At the back of the skull, the supraoccipital bone would have served as an attachment site for powerful neck ligaments.
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Saurosuchus” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.