''Trematochampsa'' is a dubious 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 n ...

of crocodyliform from the

Late 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'', ...

(

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 b ...

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) In Beceten Formation of

Niger ) , official_languages = , languages_type = National languagestype 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( ...

, ''T. taqueti'', was described by Eric Buffetaut in 1974. A second species, ''T. oblita'', was named from

Madagascar Madagascar (; mg, Madagasikara, ), officially the Republic of Madagascar ( mg, Repoblikan'i Madagasikara, links=no, ; french: République de Madagascar), is an island country in the Indian Ocean, approximately off the coast of East Africa ...

in 1979, but was renamed '' Miadanasuchus'' in 2009. ''Trematochampsa'' gives its name to the

Trematochampsidae Trematochampsidae is an extinct family of mesoeucrocodylian crocodylomorphs. Fossils are present from Madagascar, Morocco, Niger, Argentina, and Brazil (in the case of ''Caririsuchus'', where some specimens have been found in the Romualdo Membe ...

, a poorly known group of fossil crocodiles. However, the labile phylogenetic position of ''Trematochampsa'' in many studies has been attributed to character conflict, leading many authors to exclude this genus from many cladistic analyses, but Sertich et al. (2014) noted that the referred material of ''Trematochampsa'' consists of more than one crocodyliform taxon, so they opted to use only the cranial material in the dataset for the cladistic analysis of '' Rukwasuchus'' and recommended removing the postcranial material from ''Trematochampsa''. The analysis recovered ''Trematochampsa'' as a member of

Peirosauridae Peirosauridae is a Gondwanan family of mesoeucrocodylians that lived during the Cretaceous period. It was a clade of terrestrial crocodyliforms that evolved a rather dog-like form, and were terrestrial carnivores. It was phylogenetically defined ...

, rendering Trematochampsidae a junior synonym of Peirosauridae. A 2018 revision of ''T. taqueti'' found that its fossil material was a mixture of bones from peirosaurids, '' Araripesuchus'', '' Anatosuchus'', ''

Notosuchus ''Notosuchus'' (; 'southern crocodile') is an extinct genus of South American notosuchian crocodylomorph. It was terrestrial, living approximately 85 million years ago in the Santonian stage of the Late Cretaceous. Description ''Notosuchus'' ...

''-like crocodyliforms, and neosuchians. No distinguishing characteristics were found in the holotype specimen, a

lacrimal bone The lacrimal bone is a small and fragile bone of the facial skeleton; it is roughly the size of the little fingernail. It is situated at the front part of the medial wall of the orbit. It has two surfaces and four borders. Several bony landmarks of ...

, thus rendering the genus a ''nomen dubium''.

References

* Carroll, RL. (1988). ''Vertebrate Paleontology and Evolution''. W.H. Freeman and Company

External links

''Trematochampsa'' in the Paleobiology Database
Late Cretaceous crocodylomorphs of Africa Taxa named by Éric Buffetaut Prehistoric pseudosuchian genera Cretaceous Niger Coniacian genus first appearances Santonian genus extinctions {{paleo-archosaur-stub