''Pehuenchesuchus'' (meaning "

Pehuenche Pehuenche (or ''Pewenche'', people of the "pehuen" or "pewen" in Mapudungun) are an indigenous people of South America. They live in the Andes, primarily in present-day south central Chile and adjacent Argentina. Their name derives from their de ...

crocodile", after the

Mapuche The Mapuche ( (Mapuche & Spanish: )) are a group of indigenous inhabitants of south-central Chile and southwestern Argentina, including parts of Patagonia. The collective term refers to a wide-ranging ethnicity composed of various groups who sha ...

name for the region in which it was found) is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

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 ...

sebecosuchia Sebecosuchia is an extinct group of mesoeucrocodylian crocodyliforms that includes the families Sebecidae and Baurusuchidae. The group was long thought to have first appeared in the Late Cretaceous with the baurusuchids and become extinct in the ...

mesoeucrocodylia Mesoeucrocodylia is the clade that includes Eusuchia and crocodyliforms formerly placed in the paraphyletic group Mesosuchia. The group appeared during the Early Jurassic, and continues to the present day. Diagnosis It was long known that M ...

n. It was discovered in rocks of the

late Turonian The Turonian is, in the ICS' geologic timescale, the second age in the Late Cretaceous Epoch, or a stage in the Upper Cretaceous Series. It spans the time between 93.9 ± 0.8 Ma and 89.8 ± 1 Ma (million years ago). The Turonian is preceded by t ...

Coniacian The Coniacian is an age or stage in the geologic timescale. It is a subdivision of the Late Cretaceous Epoch or Upper Cretaceous Series and spans the time between 89.8 ± 1 Ma and 86.3 ± 0.7 Ma (million years ago). The Coniacian is preceded by t ...

-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'', the ...

Río Neuquén Formation (

Neuquén Group The Neuquén Group is a group of geologic formations found in Argentina. Rocks in the Neuquén Group fall within the Cenomanian to early Campanian stages of the Late Cretaceous Period. It overlies the older Lohan Cura Formation and is itself over ...

, near

Rincón de los Sauces Rincón de los Sauces ( en, Place of the willows) is a first category municipality and the capital of Pehuenches Department in Neuquén Province, Argentina. History The area was first populated by settlers around the end of the 19th and the st ...

Neuquén Neuquén (; arn, Nehuenken) is the capital city of the Argentine province of Neuquén and of the Confluencia Department, located in the east of the province. It occupies a strip of land west of the confluence of the Limay and Neuquén rivers w ...

Argentina Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...

Description

''Pehuenchesaurus'' was described in 2005 by Alan Turner and Jorge Calvo based on

MAU Mau may refer to: Places Kenya * Mau Escarpment * Mau Forest India * Mau, Bhind, a town in Madhya Pradesh * Mau, Mawal, Pune district, Marahrashtra * Mau, Punjab, a village in Punjab * Mau, Uttar Pradesh, India * Mau district, Uttar P ...

-PV-CRS-440, a nearly complete

dentary In anatomy, the mandible, lower jaw or jawbone is the largest, strongest and lowest bone in the human facial skeleton. It forms the lower jaw and holds the lower tooth, teeth in place. The mandible sits beneath the maxilla. It is the only movabl ...

(the main tooth-bearing bone of the lower jaw). This animal had a narrow, tall lower jaw, and differed from all other sebecosuchians by lacking serrations on its teeth. The first and fourth teeth were the largest, and the first tooth pointed forward slightly. The preserved jaw bone is about long. Turner and Calvo found their new genus to be the

basalmost In phylogenetics, basal is the direction of the ''base'' (or root) of a rooted phylogenetic tree or cladogram. The term may be more strictly applied only to nodes adjacent to the root, or more loosely applied to nodes regarded as being close to th ...

sebecosuchian. 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 ''P. enderi'', named for

Ender Wiggin Andrew "Ender" Wiggin is a fictional character from Orson Scott Card's 1985 science fiction novel ''Ender's Game'' and its sequels (''Speaker for the Dead'', ''Xenocide'', ''Children of the Mind'', ''Ender in Exile''), as well as in the first p ...

, a character in

Orson Scott Card Orson Scott Card (born August 24, 1951) is an American writer known best for his science fiction works. He is the first and (as of 2022) only person to win both a Hugo Award and a Nebula Award in consecutive years, winning both awards for both ...

's works.

References

Sebecids Late Cretaceous crocodylomorphs of South America Cretaceous Argentina Fossils of Argentina Fossil taxa described in 2005 Prehistoric pseudosuchian genera {{paleo-archosaur-stub