Stomatosuchus

Live reconstruction of a Stomatosuchus inermis with throat pouch. However, such a feature was based on fossils of closely related species ( Laganosuchus ) will not be detected and is purely speculative.

• Egypt

Stomatosuchus is an extinct, Cretaceous genus very großwüchsiger closer relative of modern crocodiles with unusually shaped skull. The fossil remains, a single, very large skull and some cervical vertebrae, were from the Bahariya Formation in the Eastern Sahara of Egypt. These fossils, the type material of the single, described in 1925 by German paleontologist Ernst Stromer von Reichenbach kind Stomatosuchus inermis, are in the Second World War, in the spring of 1944, was destroyed in an Allied bombing raid on Munich. Since then, no further material was found. Therefore Stomatosuchus is known today only through the publications and notes of electricity and Nopcsa.

Features

The flattened skull was nearly two feet long, of which a duckbill snout similar to about 4/5 took. The like an elongated "U" shaped lower jaw was extremely slim, and about 30 times as long as high. The two mandibular rami ran, apart from the front lots near the symphysis, in parallel. The oval gear compartments in the upper jaw had a maximum length of 1.5 cm. Teeth were not narrated, but can be derived from the size of the alveoli that, compared with the length of the skull, must have been very small. To the rear end of the pine boughs towards the alveoli were increasingly smaller and closely spaced, and finally merged into a gutter. The eyes were set far above, relatively close to each other on the head. The total length of the animal to which the discovered of electricity and skull belonged described is estimated at up to 10 meters.

Behavior

Stomatosuchus would hardly have been able to because of his fragile jaw to develop such a strong bite force like today's crocodiles. Also, the small size of the teeth indicates that he must have fed on prey that was significantly smaller than himself, he supported himself probably of relatively small fish, by lying in wait with open mouth in shallow water and unwary fish snapped that approach swam too close to his open mouth.

Later, in the Miocene, the South American alligators Nettosuchidae the family had ( Mourasuchus and relatives ) completely independently developed by Stomatosuchus a very similar way of life.

System

Stomatosuchus is the type genus of the family to the Stomatosuchidae on the current definition nor Laganosuchus heard from the Cenomanian of the western part of the Sahara (Niger, Morocco).