''Brasileosaurus'' (meaning "Brazil lizard") is a genus of notosuchid notosuchian from the Late Cretaceous

Adamantina Formation The Adamantina Formation is a geological formation in the Bauru Basin of western São Paulo state, in southeastern Brazil. Its strata date back to the Late Cretaceous epoch of the Cretaceous Period, during the Mesozoic Era. The formation is p ...

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

. The

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen ...

is ''B. pachecoi'', discovered by the Brazilian Eng. Joviano Pacheco and described by the prolific German

paleontologist Paleontology (), also spelled palaeontology or palæontology, is the scientific study of life that existed prior to, and sometimes including, the start of the Holocene epoch (roughly 11,700 years before present). It includes the study of fossi ...

Friedrich von Huene Friedrich von Huene, born Friedrich Richard von Hoinigen, (March 22, 1875 – April 4, 1969) was a German paleontologist who renamed more dinosaurs in the early 20th century than anyone else in Europe. He also made key contributions about v ...

in 1931. ''Brasileosaurus'' is not to be confused with the mesosaur '' Brazilosaurus''.

Classification

Although originally classified as a

coelurosaur Coelurosauria (; from Greek, meaning "hollow tailed lizards") is the clade containing all theropod dinosaurs more closely related to birds than to carnosaurs. Coelurosauria is a subgroup of theropod dinosaurs that includes compsognathids, tyrann ...

in the original description, it was later recognized as being a

crocodylomorph Crocodylomorpha is a group of pseudosuchian archosaurs that includes the crocodilians and their extinct relatives. They were the only members of Pseudosuchia to survive the end-Triassic extinction. During Mesozoic and early Cenozoic times, cro ...

, possibly synonymous with ''

Uruguaysuchus ''Uruguaysuchus'' is an extinct genus of crocodylomorphs from the Late Cretaceous Guichón Formation of Uruguay. It was related to ''Simosuchus ''Simosuchus'' (meaning "pug-nosed crocodile" in Greek, referring to the animal's blunt snout) is ...

''. In his description of '' Sebecus'', George Gaylord Simpson assigned ''Brasileosaurus'' to Notosuchidae, noting similarities with members of Mesoeucrocodylia.Simpson. 1937. An ancient eusuchian crocodile from Patagonia. ''American Museum Novitates''. 965, 1-20.

References

Prehistoric pseudosuchian genera Maastrichtian life Late Cretaceous crocodylomorphs of South America Cretaceous Brazil Fossils of Brazil Adamantina Formation Fossil taxa described in 1931 Taxa named by Friedrich von Huene {{paleo-archosaur-stub