Zhyrasuchus

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Zhyrasuchus
Temporal range: Late Cretaceous
Scientific classification OOjs UI icon edit-ltr.svg
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Clade: Archosauria
Order: Crocodilia
Superfamily: Crocodyloidea
Family: Crocodylidae
Genus: Zhyrasuchus
Nessov et al., 1989
Type species
Z. angustifrons
Nessov et al., 1989

Zhyrasuchus is an extinct monospecific genus of crocodylomorph that may have been a crocodylid eusuchian, but is only known from scanty material including a frontal (one of the bones of the roof of the skull). Its fossils were found in the Coniacian-age Upper Cretaceous Bissekty Formation of Dzharakhuduk, Uzbekistan. Zhyrasuchus was described in 1989 by Lev Nessov and colleagues. The type species is Z. angustifrons. A 2000 review by Glenn Storrs and Mikhail Efimov could not determine how Zhyrasuchus and the contemporaneous Tadzhikosuchus were related, or even if they were synonyms, due to the poor fossils available. [1]

References

  1. Storrs, Glenn W.; Efimov, Mikhail B. (2000). "Mesozoic crocodyliforms of north-central Eurasia". In Benton, Michael J.; Shishkin, Mikhail A.; Unwin, David M.; Kurochkin, Evgenii N. (eds.). The Age of Dinosaurs in Russia and Mongolia. Cambridge: Cambridge University Press. pp. 402–419. ISBN   0-521-55476-4.