Pholidosauridae
| Pholidosauridae | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Skeletal reconstruction of Sarcosuchus imperator |
||||||||||||
| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Middle Jurassic to Upper Cretaceous | ||||||||||||
| 164.7 to 93.5 million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Pholidosauridae | ||||||||||||
| Zittel & Eastman (1902) |
The Pholidosauridae are a group of extinct crocodiles from the mid to late Cretaceous period .
The Pholidosauridae were mainly species with an elongated snout that preferred to live in the sea and hunted for fish. They were also characterized by a typical, widened structure of the nasal cavity. They are classified in the most modern branch of the Mesoeucrocodylia , which today is part of the Neosuchia or modern crocodiles. The Pholidosauridae include the North American crocodile Terminonaris , the eponymous species Pholidosaurus and Dyrosaurus . The crocodile Sarcosuchus imperator , which is up to 12 meters long, can be viewed as a particularly modified form . It can be assumed that Sarcosuchus has evolved in adaptation to a new habitat in the area of rivers and in the process has gone from being a fish eater to an effective hunter who has also attacked dinosaurs .
The following cladogram shows the relationship hypothesis according to Sereno et al. 2001:
| Neosuchia |
|
||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
|
|
The sister group of the Pholidosauridae are therefore the Goniopholididae with the representatives Goniopholis and Sunosuchus .
literature
- Charles A. Ross (Ed.): Crocodiles and Alligators. 2nd Edition. Orbis-Verlag, Niedernhausen 2002, ISBN 3-572-01319-4 .
- Paul C. Sereno , Hans CE Larsson, Christian A. Sidor, Boubé Gado : The Giant Crocodyliform Sarcosuchus from the Cretaceous of Africa. In: Science . Vol. 294, No. 5546, 2001, pp. 1516-1519, doi : 10.1126 / science.1066521 .
