''Indosuchus'' () is a

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

abelisaurid Abelisauridae (meaning "Abel's lizards") is a family (or clade) of ceratosaurian theropod dinosaurs. Abelisaurids thrived during the Cretaceous period, on the ancient southern supercontinent of Gondwana, and today their fossil remains are found ...

dinosaur Dinosaurs are a diverse group of reptiles of the clade Dinosauria. They first appeared during the Triassic period, between 243 and 233.23 million years ago (mya), although the exact origin and timing of the evolution of dinosaurs is t ...

from the Late

Cretaceous The Cretaceous ( ) is a geological period that lasted from about 145 to 66 million years ago (Mya). It is the third and final period of the Mesozoic Era, as well as the longest. At around 79 million years, it is the longest geological period of th ...

Period Period may refer to: Common uses * Era, a length or span of time * Full stop (or period), a punctuation mark Arts, entertainment, and media * Period (music), a concept in musical composition * Periodic sentence (or rhetorical period), a concept ...

(70 to 66

million years ago The abbreviation Myr, "million years", is a unit of a quantity of (i.e. ) years, or 31.556926 teraseconds. Usage Myr (million years) is in common use in fields such as Earth science and cosmology. Myr is also used with Mya (million years ago). ...

– the

Maastrichtian The Maastrichtian () is, in the ICS geologic timescale, the latest age (uppermost stage) of the Late Cretaceous Epoch or Upper Cretaceous Series, the Cretaceous Period or System, and of the Mesozoic Era or Erathem. It spanned the interval from ...

), a

theropod Theropoda (; ), whose members are known as theropods, is a dinosaur clade that is characterized by hollow bones and three toes and claws on each limb. Theropods are generally classed as a group of saurischian dinosaurs. They were ancestrally c ...

related to '' Abelisaurus''. Like most theropods, ''Indosuchus'' was a

bipedal Bipedalism is a form of terrestrial locomotion where an organism moves by means of its two rear limbs or legs. An animal or machine that usually moves in a bipedal manner is known as a biped , meaning 'two feet' (from Latin ''bis'' 'double' ...

carnivore A carnivore , or meat-eater (Latin, ''caro'', genitive ''carnis'', meaning meat or "flesh" and ''vorare'' meaning "to devour"), is an animal or plant whose food and energy requirements derive from animal tissues (mainly muscle, fat and other sof ...

. It was about 7 metres long, weighed about 1.2 tonnes, and had a crested skull, flattened on the top.

Naming

''Indosuchus'' was named by

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 1932 and was described by Huene and

Charles Alfred Matley Charles Alfred Matley (1866–1947) was a British paleontologist and geologist in India, the British West Indies and Wales. Matley was educated at Birmingham University, and earned a doctorate in geology (D.Sc.) from the University of London in J ...

in 1933 from three partial skulls found by Matley in

India India, officially the Republic of India (Hindi: ), is a country in South Asia. It is the seventh-largest country by area, the second-most populous country, and the most populous democracy in the world. Bounded by the Indian Ocean on the so ...

near

Jabalpur Jabalpur is a city situated on the banks of Narmada River in the state of Madhya Pradesh, India. According to the 2011 census, it is the third-largest urban agglomeration in Madhya Pradesh and the country's 38th-largest urban agglomeration. J ...

Madhya Pradesh Madhya Pradesh (, ; meaning 'central province') is a state in central India. Its capital is Bhopal, and the largest city is Indore, with Jabalpur, Ujjain, Gwalior, Sagar, and Rewa being the other major cities. Madhya Pradesh is the seco ...

in strata of the

Lameta Formation The Lameta Formation, also known as the Infratrappean Beds, is a sedimentary geological formation found in Madhya Pradesh, Gujarat, and Maharashtra, India, associated with the Deccan Traps. It is of Maastrichtian age (Late Cretaceous), and is nota ...

.F. v. Huene and C. A. Matley, 1933, "The Cretaceous Saurischia and Ornithischia of the Central Provinces of India", ''Palaeontologica Indica (New Series), Memoirs of the Geological Survey of India'' 21(1): 1-74 The

lectotype In biology, a type is a particular specimen (or in some cases a group of specimens) of an organism to which the scientific name of that organism is formally attached. In other words, a type is an example that serves to anchor or centralizes the ...

is GSI K27/685, consisting of the parietals and frontals of a single individual. Two paralectotypes were referred, both including material from the posterior skull, with the fossils referred based on the parietal morphology. The generic name is derived from ''Indos'',

Ancient Greek Ancient Greek includes the forms of the Greek language used in ancient Greece and the ancient world from around 1500 BC to 300 BC. It is often roughly divided into the following periods: Mycenaean Greek (), Dark Ages (), the Archaic peri ...

for the

Indus The Indus ( ) is a transboundary river of Asia and a trans-Himalayan river of South and Central Asia. The river rises in mountain springs northeast of Mount Kailash in Western Tibet, flows northwest through the disputed region of Kashmir, ...

and ''Soukhos'', Ancient Greek for the Egyptian crocodile god. The specific name ''raptorius'' means "raptorial" in

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power of the ...

Classification

Because only some skull elements have been found, ''Indosuchus'' placement has been somewhat erratic. Although it is now somewhat firmly placed within the Abelisauridae, it was originally assigned by von Huene to the

Allosauridae Allosauridae is a family of medium to large bipedal, carnivorous allosauroid theropod dinosaurs from the Late Jurassic. Allosauridae is a fairly old taxonomic group, having been first named by the American paleontologist Othniel Charles Marsh in ...

Alick Walker Alick Donald Walker (26 October 1925 – 4 December 1999) was a British palaeontologist, after whom the ''Alwalkeria'' genus of dinosaur is named. He was born in Skirpenbeck, near York and attended Pocklington School from 1936 to 1943. He began a ...

thought in 1964 it was a member of the

Tyrannosauridae Tyrannosauridae (or tyrannosaurids, meaning "tyrant lizards") is a family of coelurosaurian theropod dinosaurs that comprises two subfamilies containing up to thirteen genera, including the eponymous ''Tyrannosaurus''. The exact number of genera ...

. The discovery of other abelisaurids like ''

Carnotaurus ''Carnotaurus'' (; ) is a genus of theropod dinosaur that lived in South America during the Late Cretaceous period, probably sometime between 71 and 69 million years ago. The only species is ''Carnotaurus sastrei''. Known from a single well-p ...

'' has helped clarify its position; in 1986

José Bonaparte José Fernando Bonaparte (14 June 1928 – 18 February 2020) was an Argentine paleontologist who discovered a plethora of South American dinosaurs and mentored a new generation of Argentine paleontologists . One of the best-known Argentine paleo ...

concluded it was an abelisaurid. ''Indosuchus'' is defined based on how the frontonasal suture is placed anteriorly compared to lacrimal, according to Novas ''et al.,'' 2004.Novas, F., Agnolin, F., & Bandyopadhyay, S. (2004). Cretaceous theropods from India: a review of specimens described by Huene and Matley (1933). ''Revista del Museo Argentino de Ciencias Naturales nueva serie'', ''6''(1), 67-103.

References

External links

Dann's Dinosaurs
Abelisaurids Late Cretaceous dinosaurs Dinosaurs of India and Madagascar Fossil taxa described in 1933 Taxa named by Friedrich von Huene Taxa named by Charles Alfred Matley {{theropod-stub

Naming

Classification

See also

References

External links