Purussaurus
| Purussaurus | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
Live reconstruction of Purussaurus brasiliensis |
||||||||||||
| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Upper Miocene | ||||||||||||
| 15 to 8 million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Purussaurus | ||||||||||||
| Rodrigues , 1892 | ||||||||||||
Purussaurus is an extinct genus of crocodiles (Crocodylia), which probably contains the largest representatives within this group. The length of the individuals of the largest species, Purussaurus brasiliensis , is estimated to be up to 12.5 meters. Purussaurus is a relative of the caimans (Caimaninae), which in turn belong to the alligators (Alligatoridae). He livedin the northern half of South Americaduring the Upper Miocene , about 15 to eight million years ago. Purussaurus is known from several skulls and individual vertebrae and ribs from Venezuela , Colombia , Peru , Bolivia and the Brazilian state of Acre .
features
The skulls assigned to Purusaurus have a length of 90 cm to 1.4 meters. Based on this, the body length of the respective animals is estimated at a maximum of 12.5 meters. The skull is massive, with eyes set high above and quite narrow. The jaws are very strong and broad. The tip of the snout is relatively round. The front part of the snout is strongly arched and provided with bony bumps and ridges.
Systematics
A distinction is currently made between three species: the type species and largest species Purussaurus brasiliensis and Purussaurus neivensis , initially described as Dinosuchus neivensis , and Purussaurus mirandai , which was only described in 2006. The latter, compared to the other species, has a particularly flat skull and wider outer nostrils. In P. mirandai and P. brasiliensis , in contrast to P. neivensis , the outer nostrils are generally very large and elongated and the "nasal bones" (nasalia) that adjoin their rear end are correspondingly short.
Purussaurus forms a clade with the real caimans ( Caiman ) and the black caiman ( Melanosuchus niger ), which is the sister group of the smooth- fronted caimans ( Paleosuchus ).
Way of life
Almost nothing is known about the Purussaurus way of life . The very large, heavy skull suggests that it lived strictly aquatic. Its teeth were somewhat flattened at the crown and it could be that it ate not only fish, turtles, other crocodiles and watering mammals, but also plants, as caimans occasionally do today. In August 2020, a shin of a giant sloth from the Mylodontidae family was described with numerous bite marks attributed to Purussaurus .
literature
- Orangel A. Aguilera, Douglas Riff, Jean Bocquentin-Villanueva: A new giant Purussaurus (Crocodyliformes, Alligatoridae) from the Upper Miocene Urumaco Formation, Venezuela. In: Journal of Systematic Palaeontology. Vol. 4, No. 3, 2006, pp. 221-232, doi : 10.1017 / S147720190600188X (alternative full text access : ResearchGate ).
Web links
- Scienceblogs.com: Purussaurs : monster caimans of the Miocene
- Universidade Federal do Acre, Laboratório de Paleontologia: Purussaurus brasiliensis - O maior predador da Amazônia
Individual evidence
- ↑ a b Tito Aureliano, Aline M. Ghilardi, Edson Guilherme, Jonas P. Souza-Filho, Mauro Cavalcanti: Morphometry, Bite-Force, and Paleobiology of the Late Miocene Caiman Purussaurus brasiliensis. In: PLoS ONE. Vol. 10, No. 2, 2015, e0117944, doi : 10.1371 / journal.pone.0117944 .
- ^ François Pujos & Rodolfo Salas-Gismondi. 2020. Predation of the giant Miocene caiman Purussaurus on a mylodontid ground sloth in the wetlands of proto-Amazonia. Biol. Lett 16 (8): 20200239; doi: 10.1098 / rsbl.2020.0239