Rauisuchidae
| Rauisuchidae | ||||||||||||
|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|---|
|
||||||||||||
| Temporal occurrence | ||||||||||||
| Lower Triassic to Upper Triassic | ||||||||||||
| 251 to 199.6 million years | ||||||||||||
| Locations | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Systematics | ||||||||||||
|
||||||||||||
| Scientific name | ||||||||||||
| Rauisuchidae | ||||||||||||
| von Huene , 1936 |
The Rauisuchidae are a taxon of extinct predatory reptiles from the Archosauria group . They lived from the lower to the upper Triassic and reached up to ten meters in length.
Body fossils and fossil tracks that are assigned to them have been found in Europe, in the northern and southern parts of the American double continent, and in East Africa . The trace fossils show that the Rauisuchidae moved quadruped (four-legged). Their hind legs were longer than their front legs and were largely vertical, so they were only slightly splayed and more or less vertically below the body. Their ankle resembles that of the crocodiles with which the Rauisuchidae, together with other forms, form the taxon of the Crurotarsi .
The Rauisuchidae were armored on the back by two rows of small bone plates ( osteodermata ), on the tail by a row of bone plates. The panels were hinged together. An appendage on the leading edge of a bone plate engaged in a notch in the preceding plate.
One of the largest Rauisuchids was Batrachotomus kupferzellensis from the late Ladinian ( Erfurt Formation ) of Germany ( Kupferzell fossil deposit ) with a length of about six meters. Other genera are u. a. Luperosuchus , Postosuchus , Rauisuchus , Prestosuchus and Teratosaurus .
literature
- Robert L. Carroll : Paleontology and Evolution of the Vertebrates. Thieme, Stuttgart et al. 1993, ISBN 3-13-774401-6 .
Individual evidence
- ↑ Palæos - Ticinosuchus & Batrachotomus Palaeos.com (as of January 25, 2009)
