Bretesuchus

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Bretesuchus
Temporal range: Late Paleocene (Itaboraian-Riochican)
~58.7–55.8  Ma
O
S
D
C
P
T
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Pg
N
Bretesuchus bonapartei.jpg
Bretesuchus skull diagram.png
Skull diagram showcasing preserved elements in white
Scientific classification OOjs UI icon edit-ltr.svg
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Clade: Archosauria
Clade: Pseudosuchia
Clade: Crocodylomorpha
Clade: Notosuchia
Clade: Sebecosuchia
Clade: Sebecia
Family: Sebecidae
Genus: Bretesuchus
Gasparini, Fernandez & Powell, 1993
Type species
Bretesuchus bonapartei
Gasparini et al., 1993

Bretesuchus is an extinct genus of sebecosuchian mesoeucrocodylian within the family Sebecidae known from northwestern Argentina. [1] [2] It was a large apex predator (total length approximately 4 m). [3]

Contents

Discovery

Hypotherical body silhouette based in relatives, compared to a 175cm tall human Bretesuchus size reference.png
Hypotherical body silhouette based in relatives, compared to a 175cm tall human

Fossils of Bretesuchus have been found in the El Brete locality, from the Maíz Gordo Formation of northwestern Argentina and date back to the Thanetian stage of the late Palaeocene, about 58.7-55.8 million years ago. [2] The highly bent premaxilla shows that it lies within the suborder Sebecosuchia, a group of mostly South American terrestrial carnivorous crocodylomorphs with distinctive laterally compressed snouts. [2] [4] Bretesuchus was originally assigned to its own family, the Bretesuchidae which was found to be the sister group of Sebecus . [2] In 2007, a species of Sebecus , S. querejazus from the Early Paleocene Santa Lucia Formation in Bolivia, was reclassified as a bretesuchid. It was given its own genus, Zulmasuchus . [5] However, recent phylogenetic analyses found Bretesuchidae to nest deeply within Sebecidae, and thus to be synonymous with it. Zulmasuchus was found to be closely related to Sebecus, as originally had been proposed. [6]

Life reconstruction Bretesuchus portrait paleoart.png
Life reconstruction

Etymology

Bretesuchus capturing an hypothetical notoungulate. Bretesuchus.jpg
Bretesuchus capturing an hypothetical notoungulate.

Bretesuchus was named by Zulma Gasparini, Marta Fernandez and Jaime E. Powell in 1993 and the type species is Bretesuchus bonapartei. The generic name refers to the "El Brete" locality, where the fossil remains were found, and suchus, Latinized from the Greek souchos, an Egyptian crocodile god. The specific name honors Jose Bonaparte. [2]

References

  1. Bretesuchus at Fossilworks.org
  2. 1 2 3 4 5 Gasparini, Zulma; Fernandez, Marta; Powell, Jaime E. (1993). "New Tertiary sebecosuchians (Crocodylomorpha) from South America: phylogenetic implications". Historical Biology. 7: 1–19. Bibcode:1993HBio....7....1G. doi:10.1080/10292389309380440.
  3. http://darrennaish.files.wordpress.com/2013/01/naish-2001-geology-today-crocodilians.pdf page 73.
  4. Turner, A. H.; Calvo, J. O. (2005). "A new sebecosuchian crocodyliform from the Late Cretaceous of Patagonia". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology . 25 (1): 87–98. doi:10.1671/0272-4634(2005)025[0087:ANSCFT]2.0.CO;2.
  5. Paolillo, A.; Linares, O. (2007). "Nuevos cocodrilos Sebecosuchia del Cenozoica Suramericana (Mesosuchia : Crocodylia)" (PDF). Paleobiologia Neotropical. 3: 1–25. Archived from the original (PDF) on 2009-03-03. Retrieved 2012-01-14.
  6. Diego Pol and Jaime E. Powell (2011). "A new sebecid mesoeucrocodylian from the Rio Loro Formation (Palaeocene) of north-western Argentina". Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society. 163: S7 –S36. doi: 10.1111/j.1096-3642.2011.00714.x . hdl: 11336/69518 .