Sebecidae 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 ...

family of

prehistoric Prehistory, also known as pre-literary history, is the period of human history between the use of the first stone tools by hominins 3.3 million years ago and the beginning of recorded history with the invention of writing systems. The use of ...

terrestrial sebecosuchian

crocodylomorphs 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, cr ...

. The oldest known member of the group is '' Ogresuchus furatus'' known from the Upper Cretaceous ( Maastrichtian) Tremp Formation ( Spain). Sebecids were diverse, abundant and broadly distributed in South America (mostly in Argentina, Brazil and

Bolivia , image_flag = Bandera de Bolivia (Estado).svg , flag_alt = Horizontal tricolor (red, yellow, and green from top to bottom) with the coat of arms of Bolivia in the center , flag_alt2 = 7 × 7 square p ...

) during the

Cenozoic The Cenozoic ( ; ) is Earth's current geological era, representing the last 66million years of Earth's history. It is characterised by the dominance of mammals, birds and flowering plants, a cooling and drying climate, and the current configura ...

, until the

Middle Miocene The Middle Miocene is a sub-epoch of the Miocene Epoch made up of two stages: the Langhian and Serravallian stages. The Middle Miocene is preceded by the Early Miocene. The sub-epoch lasted from 15.97 ± 0.05 Ma to 11.608 ± 0.005 Ma (million y ...

; although it has been suggested that at least some forms could have survived until the Miocene-Pliocene boundary in Brazil. This group included many medium- and large-sized

genera 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 nomenclat ...

, from '' Sebecus'' to a giant indeterminate unnamed species from the Miocene.

Phylogeny

The following cladogram simplified after Diego Pol and Jaime E. Powell (2011).

References

Neogene crocodylomorphs Paleogene crocodylomorphs Prehistoric reptiles of South America Maastrichtian first appearances Miocene extinctions Prehistoric reptile families {{paleo-archosaur-stub