| Allodaposuchus Fossil range: Late Cretaceous | |
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 Allodaposuchus precedens | |
| Scientific classification
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Allodaposuchus | |
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Allodaposuchus was an ancient reptile very close to the ancestor of today's crocodilians. It lived during the Upper Cretaceous (Campanian-Maastrichtian) of Southern Europe (Spain, Romania).
Fragmentary remains of Allodaposuchus precedens were found at Valioara, in the Hateg Basin in Romania[1].
These fragments were originally identified as Crocodilus affuvelensis Matheron, 1869 [2], whose rests have been found in France.
Both species were considered as synonyms; nevertheless, C. affuvelensis has been recently recognised as belonging to the genus Massaliasuchus[3].
More recently (2006), a complete skull of A. precedens has been discovered in the Maastrichtian locality of Oarda de Jos in the southwestern Transylvanian Basin of Romania and shed new lights on the phylogeny of the genus.[4]
It probably grew to about 10 feet long in length, depending what type of environment it lived in.
Description[]
Like many other Cretaceous crocodylomorphs, Allodaposuchus has a relatively small body size compared to living crocodylians. The largest known specimen of Allodaposuchus belongs to an individual that was probably around 3 metres (9.8 ft) long. Allodaposuchus has a short, flattened, and rounded skull. Of the two known species, A. precedens has a brevirostrine or "short-snouted" skull with a snout about the same length as the skull table (the region of the skull behind the eye sockets) and A. subjuniperus has a mesorostrine or "middle-snouted" skull with a snout that is longer than the skull table. The main feature that distinguishes Allodaposuchus species from other related crocodylomorphs is the orientation of a groove at the back of the skull called the cranioquadrate passage; unlike the cranioquadrate passages of other crocodylomorphs, which are only visible at the back of the skull, the cranioquadrate passage of Allodaposuchus is visible when the skull is viewed from the side.
Species[]
The type species of Allodaposuchus, A. precedens, was named by Hungarian paleontologist Franz Nopcsa in 1928 from Vălioara, Romania. Nopcsa found bone fragments in a deposit of the Hațeg Basin that dates back to the late Maastrichtian stage - the very end of the Late Cretaceous. Several partial skulls from Spain and France were attributed to A. precedens in 2001. Some of these skulls came from Campanian-age deposits slightly older than those in Romania, meaning that the species must have persisted for about 5 million years. In 2013 a second species of Allodaposuchus, A. subjuniperus, was named on the basis of a skull from the late-Maastrichtian Conqués Formation in the province of Huesca, Spain. The skull was found underneath a juniper tree whose roots had grown between the bones, hence the species name subjuniperus or "under juniper" in Latin. The 2013 study also proposed that the French and Spanish fossils assigned to A. precedens in 2001 might actually represent a new unnamed species of Allodaposuchus currently identified as Allodaposuchus sp. A study published in 2005 had suggested that these fossils belong to several different genera of crocodylomorphs and that the original Romanian material is too fragmentary to assign to its own genus, making Allodaposuchus a nomen dubium or "dubious name". However, the 2013 study reaffirmed the Romanian material's distinctiveness from other European Cretaceous crocodylomorphs and therefore reaffirmed the validity of Allodaposuchus as a genus.
Relationships[]
References[]
- ^ Nopcsa F., 1928 - Paleontological notes on Reptilia. 7. Classification of the Crocodilia - Geologica Hungarica, Series Palaeontologica 1: 75–84.
- ^ Nopcsa F., 1915–16 - Die Dinosaurier der siebenbürgischen landesteile Ungarns - Mitteilungen Aus Dem Jahrbuche Der KGL. Ungarischen Geologischen Reichsanstalt: 1–24.
- ^ Martin J. E. & Buffetaut E. 2008 - Crocodilus affuvelensis Matheron, 1869 from the Late Cretaceous of southern France: a reassessment - Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 152 (3): 567-580
- ^ Buscalioni, A. D., Ortega F., Weisampel D. B. & Jianu C. M., 2001 - A revision of the crocodyliform Allodaposuchus precedens from the Upper Cretaceous of the Hateg Basin, Romania. Its relevance in the phylogeny of Eusuchia - Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 21: 74–86. PDF
