Goniopholididae

Skeleton of Goniopholis

• Western Europe
• North America
• Thailand
• Xinjiang

The Goniopholididae are a family of crocodiles, whose fossils have been found in marine and freshwater sediments from the Jurassic to the Cretaceous. They lived on both sides of the nascent North Atlantic in Western Europe and North America and in Asia, so exclusively on the then northern continent Laurasia. The type species is Goniopholis.

Features

These were crocodiles with a broad, not very long snout. In contrast, the same living Pholidosauridae had very narrow snouts. The teeth of the Goniopholididae were very strong. In their appearance and way of life, it resembles today's alligators and crocodiles rights. Your vertebrae were primitive and had concave articular surfaces. The secondary palate was only slightly more advanced than the Mesosuchia. The Goniopholididae were very large, a skull of Sunosuchus found in Thailand had a length of 1.14 meters. The length of the associated animal is estimated to be eight meters.

Genera

• Calsoyasuchus
• Denazinosuchus
• Goniopholis
• Siamosuchus
• Sunosuchus