Prestosuchus

Prestosuchus chiniquensis, skeletal reconstruction

• South America ( Brazil)

• Prestosuchus chiniquensis

Prestosuchus ( " Presto crocodile " ) is a genus diapsider reptiles ( Diapsida ) within the Prestosuchidae, an extinct taxon predatory original living archosaurs ( Archosauromorpha ) belonging to the " Rauisuchiern " ( Rauisuchia ) is provided.

The fossils were found in the southern Brazilian Prestosuchus of rock strata, whose origin dates back to the entire Upper Triassic. The fossils of Prestosuchus are the youngest known of the Prestosuchidae.

The Rauisuchier

The Rauisuchier - their status as a distinct natural group ( monophyletic ) is located in the scientific debate - among the Crurotarsi, a line of archosaurs, which also belong to the crocodiles. The Rauisuchier were very successful during the Triassic. They were relatively large, predatory archosaurs and good runners, some may have been bipedal.

Description of Prestosuchus

Prestosuchus moved fours ( quadruped ) on. He arrived about five meters in length and was greater than the oldest known carnivorous dinosaur Eoraptor and Herrerasaurus, who also lived around the same time in South America. Prestosuchus had as the other Rauisuchier a relatively large skull and relatively few side flattened teeth with serrated cutting edges.

Fund history

Prestosuchus 1942 scientifically described by the vertebrate paleontologist Friedrich von Huene and assigned to the genus, the species P. chiniquensis and P. loricatus. The validity of the second type is controversial. Von Huene named the genus after Vicentino Presto, a fossil collector, who found in 1925 the lower jaw of the first Prestosuchus in the Rio do Rasto layers west of Chiniqua. Presto led von Huene in 1928 to recover the locality to the rest of the skeleton, in the meantime, however, a large part of the skull had been destroyed by weathering. The excavated here is the holotype specimen of Prestosuchus and is preserved today in Munich.

Prestosuchus and Chirotherium

The cause of the traces of the tracking genus Chirotherium be suspected for von Huene publications on Prestosuchus, Rauisuchus and Procerosuchus among the representatives of Rauisuchier. Paleontologist Wolfgang Soergel made ​​in 1925 to the hypothetical model of Chirotherium and von Huene assumed to have determined with the 1942 drawn up by him taxon Rauisuchia the counterpart in reality.