Machimosaurus
| Machimosaurus | ||||||||||||
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Machimosaurus fossil reconstruction in the Museum of Natural Sciences in Brussels. |
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| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| middle Oxfordian (Upper Jurassic) to Hauterivian (Lower Cretaceous) | ||||||||||||
| 160 to 130 million years | ||||||||||||
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| Systematics | ||||||||||||
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| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Machimosaurus | ||||||||||||
| Meyer , 1837 | ||||||||||||
Machimosaurus is a genus of extinct marine crocodiles from the Mesozoic Era known from Europe and North Africa. At that time the sea level was much higher than it is today and Europe consisted of many islands and archipelagos. In between there was a huge shallow sea .
Machimosaurus is known in many parts of Europe primarily for its teeth, for example in England, NW Germany, Pomerania, France, Portugal and Switzerland. In addition, various finds allow a reconstruction of the skull. Other skeletal elements are only known in fragments.
The genus included some of the largest crocodile-like reptiles that ever lived. Adult representatives of the Machimosaurus rex species probably reached lengths of up to 10 m. The shape of the snout of Machimosaurus is reminiscent of a gavial-like crocodile, but it is much more massive, as are the teeth, which appear extremely wide and also massive. As with Steneosaurus , another marine crocodile of that time, the teeth in the jaw are different. The fangs of the tip of the snout are long, narrow and pointed, while all others are conical and blunt. The furrowed surface with longitudinal stripes is very typical.
Machimosaurus also sought out the open sea and specialized in hard-shelled prey, such as the large sea turtles of that time. This is proven by finds of Machimosaurus together with armor plates from sea turtles. With its cone-shaped teeth, it could easily crack the turtle shell. Many of the tanks or remains of tanks found therefore show bite wounds. Some turtles got away with their lives after being attacked. This is proven by bite injuries, some of which healed again. Machimosaurus will not have spurned the large ammonites and fish of the Upper Jurassic either.
The generic name Machimosaurus means "arguable lizard", derived from the Greek "μα´χιμoι" = "arguable" and the Latinized form Saurus for Greek σαυρος "lizard".
species
- Machimosaurus hugii von Meyer, 1837 ( type species )
- Machimosaurus buffetauti Young et al., 2014
- Machimosaurus mosae Sauvage & Liénard, 1879
- Machimosaurus nowackianus (from Huene, 1938)
- Machimosaurus rex Fanti et al., 2016
literature
- Rodney Steel: The fossil crocodiles (= Die Neue Brehm Bücherei. Bd. 488, ISSN 0138-1423 ). A. Ziemsen Verlag, Wittenberg Lutherstadt 1975.
- Mark T. Young, Stéphane Hua, Lorna Steel, Davide Foffa, Stephen L. Brusatte, Silvan Thüring, Octávio Mateus, José Ignacio Ruiz-Omeñaca, Philipe Havlik, Yves Lepage, Marco Brandalize De Andrade: Revision of the Late Jurassic teleosaurid genus Machimosaurus (Crocodylomorpha, Thalattosuchia). In: Royal Society Open Science. October 15, 2014, doi : 10.1098 / rsos.140222 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Federico Fanti, Tetsuto Miyashita, Luigi Cantelli, Fawsi Mnasri, Jihed Dridi, Michela Contessi and Andrea Cau. 2016. The Largest Thalattosuchian (Crocodylomorpha) supports Teleosaurid Survival Across the Jurassic-Cretaceous Boundary. Cretaceous Research. DOI: 10.1016 / j.cretres.2015.11.011
- ↑ Bernard Krebs : The Jurassic crocodile Machimosaurus H. v. Meyer. In: Paleontological Journal . Vol. 41, No. 1/2, 1967, pp. 46-59, doi : 10.1007 / BF02998548 .