Tethysuchia
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Tethysuchia 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 ...
clade A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English term, ...
of neosuchian
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 crocodylomorphs from the late
Middle Jurassic The Middle Jurassic is the second epoch of the Jurassic Period. It lasted from about 174.1 to 163.5 million years ago. Fossils of land-dwelling animals, such as dinosaurs, from the Middle Jurassic are relatively rare, but geological formations co ...
( Bathonian stage) to the
Early Eocene In the geologic timescale the Ypresian is the oldest age or lowest stratigraphic stage of the Eocene. It spans the time between , is preceded by the Thanetian Age (part of the Paleocene) and is followed by the Eocene Lutetian Age. The Ypresian i ...
( Ypresian stage) of Asia, Europe,
North America North America is a continent in the Northern Hemisphere and almost entirely within the Western Hemisphere. It is bordered to the north by the Arctic Ocean, to the east by the Atlantic Ocean, to the southeast by South America and the Car ...
and South America. It was named by the French paleontologist Eric Buffetaut in
1982 Events January * January 1 – In Malaysia and Singapore, clocks are adjusted to the same time zone, UTC+8 (GMT+8.00). * January 13 – Air Florida Flight 90 crashes shortly after takeoff into the 14th Street bridges, 14th Street Bridge in ...
as a suborder. Tethysuchia was considered to be a synonym of Dyrosauridae or
Pholidosauridae Pholidosauridae is an extinct family of aquatic neosuchian mesoeucrocodylian crocodylomorphs. Fossils have been found in Europe (Denmark, England, France, Germany, Spain and Sweden), Africa (Algeria, Niger, Mali, Morocco and Tunisia), North Amer ...
for many years. In most phylogenetic analyses the node Dyrosauridae+Pholidosauridae was strongly supported. De Andrade ''et al.'' (2011) suggested that Tethysuchia be resurrected for that node. They defined it as a node-based taxon "composed of ''
Pholidosaurus purbeckensis ''Pholidosaurus'' is an extinct genus of neosuchian crocodylomorph. It is the type genus of the family Pholidosauridae. Fossils have been found in northwestern Germany. The genus is known to have existed during the Berriasian-Albian stages of the ...
'' (Mansel-Pleydell, 1888) and ''
Dyrosaurus phosphaticus ''Dyrosaurus'' is a genus of extinct crocodylomorph that lived during the early Eocene. The name ''Dyrosaurus'' comes from () the Greek for lizard or reptile, and Dyr for Djebel Dyr (mountain) close to where the type species was discovered. It ...
'' (Thomas, 1893), their common ancestor and all its descendants". In their analysis they found that the support for Tethysuchia is actually stronger than the support for Thalattosuchia. The following cladogram shows the position of Tethysuchia among the Neosuchia sensu this study.


References

Cretaceous crocodylomorphs Jurassic crocodylomorphs Paleocene crocodylomorphs Bathonian first appearances Ypresian extinctions Eocene crocodylomorphs Taxa named by Éric Buffetaut {{paleo-archosaur-stub