''Iharkutosuchus'' (" Iharkút crocodile", after where it was found) is an extinct

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...

of basal

eusuchia Eusuchia is a clade of crocodylomorphs that first appeared in the Early Cretaceous with '' Hylaeochampsa''. Along with Dyrosauridae and Sebecosuchia, they were the only crocodyliformes who survived the K-T extinction. Since the other two clades ...

crocodyliform Crocodyliformes is a clade of crurotarsan archosaurs, the group often traditionally referred to as "crocodilians". They are the first members of Crocodylomorpha to possess many of the features that define later relatives. They are the only pseudo ...

. Its fossils have been found in the

Santonian The Santonian is an age in the geologic timescale or a chronostratigraphic stage. It is a subdivision of the Late Cretaceous Epoch or Upper Cretaceous Series. It spans the time between 86.3 ± 0.7 mya (million years ago) and 83.6 ± 0.7 mya. ...

-age

Upper Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''creta'', th ...

Csehbánya Formation The Csehbánya Formation is a geological formation in the Transdanubian Mountains of Veszprém County, Hungary. The formation dates to the Late Santonian (around 85-84 million years ago) of the Late Cretaceous. It represents a floodplain environ ...

in the Bakony Mountains of western

Hungary Hungary ( hu, Magyarország ) is a landlocked country in Central Europe. Spanning of the Pannonian Basin, Carpathian Basin, it is bordered by Slovakia to the north, Ukraine to the northeast, Romania to the east and southeast, Serbia to the ...

Description

It is based on MTM 2006.52.1, a nearly complete skull, and several other partial skulls, isolated skull bones, and numerous teeth are also known. ''Iharkutosuchus'' was a small crocodyliform (skull length , estimated body length ). Its skull was low, and the snout was short. ''Iharkutosuchus'' is unusual in its heterodonty: some of its teeth were complex and multicusped, like mammal teeth. The structure of the skull indicates that it could grind food with a mobile lower jaw, and together with the teeth suggest a diet of fibrous plant material.

Classification

The genus was described in 2007 by Attila Ősi and colleagues. 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 specime ...

is ''I. makadii'', named for László Makádi. A 2011

phylogenetic In biology, phylogenetics (; from Greek φυλή/ φῦλον [] "tribe, clan, race", and wikt:γενετικός, γενετικός [] "origin, source, birth") is the study of the evolutionary history and relationships among or within groups o ...

study recovered ''Iharkutosuchus'' as a member of

Hylaeochampsidae Hylaeochampsidae is an extinct family of basal eusuchian crocodylomorphs thought to be closely related to the order Crocodylia. Classification Hylaeochampsidae was first constructed by Charles William Andrews in 1913 to include just one membe ...

, a group of basal

ns, as shown in the

cladogram A cladogram (from Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an evolutionary tree because it does not show how ancestors are related to ...

below.

References

Late Cretaceous crocodylomorphs of Europe Late Cretaceous reptiles of Europe Neosuchians Prehistoric pseudosuchian genera {{paleo-archosaur-stub