''Caiman venezuelensis'' is an extinct

species In biology, a species is the basic unit of classification and a taxonomic rank of an organism, as well as a unit of biodiversity. A species is often defined as the largest group of organisms in which any two individuals of the appropriate s ...

of caiman that lived in

South America South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the southe ...

during the

Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...

. The

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of several ...

of ''C. venezuelensis'' — OR-1677, a partial left

premaxilla The premaxilla (or praemaxilla) is one of a pair of small cranial bones at the very tip of the upper jaw of many animals, usually, but not always, bearing teeth. In humans, they are fused with the maxilla. The "premaxilla" of therian mammal has b ...

bone — was discovered in the locality of El Breal of Orocual, in the Mesa Formation, in the state of

Monagas ) , anthem = '' Himno del Estado Monagas'' , image_map = Monagas in Venezuela.svg , map_alt = , map_caption = Location within Venezuela , pushpin_map = , pushpin_m ...

Venezuela Venezuela (; ), officially the Bolivarian Republic of Venezuela ( es, link=no, República Bolivariana de Venezuela), is a country on the northern coast of South America, consisting of a continental landmass and many islands and islets in th ...

, the country of which derives their species name. Cidade ''et al.'' (2019) rejected the classification of ''C. venezuelensis'' as a distinct species, and considered it to be a

junior synonym The Botanical and Zoological Codes of nomenclature treat the concept of synonymy differently. * In botanical nomenclature, a synonym is a scientific name that applies to a taxon that (now) goes by a different scientific name. For example, Linna ...

of the extant spectacled caiman (''Caiman crocodilus'').

Description

The premaxilla preserved measures long, with an estimated total length of . It has a strong premaxillary sutural surface, a hole developed in the fourth tooth of the jaw bone, and short spaces between the alveoli, indicating that despite its size, their characteristics were different from the current young alligatorids and thus corresponds to subadult or adult individual. Then ''C. venezuelensis'' could one of the smallest known species of alligatorids, even smaller than the dwarf caimans of the genus ''

Paleosuchus ''Paleosuchus'' is a South American genus of reptiles in the subfamily Caimaninae of the family (biology), family Alligatoridae. They are the smallest members of the order Crocodilia in the Americas. The genus contains two extant species and a ye ...

''. It is also distinguished from other alligatorids have long narrow premaxilla, about twice as long as wide.

Distribution

Despite the abundance of fossil sites of the

Pliocene The Pliocene ( ; also Pleiocene) is the epoch in the geologic time scale that extends from 5.333 million to 2.58Pleistocene The Pleistocene ( , often referred to as the ''Ice age'') is the geological Epoch (geology), epoch that lasted from about 2,580,000 to 11,700 years ago, spanning the Earth's most recent period of repeated glaciations. Before a change was fina ...

in South America, the remains of

crocodilian Crocodilia (or Crocodylia, both ) is an order of mostly large, predatory, semiaquatic reptiles, known as crocodilians. They first appeared 95 million years ago in the Late Cretaceous period ( Cenomanian stage) and are the closest living ...

s of these periods are scarce and fragmentary and generally little studied. ''C. venezuelensis'' is one of the few findings confirmed of a distinct species of this period and may help clarify the history of this group after the

Miocene The Miocene ( ) is the first geological epoch of the Neogene Period and extends from about (Ma). The Miocene was named by Scottish geologist Charles Lyell; the name comes from the Greek words (', "less") and (', "new") and means "less recen ...

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q724767 Alligatoridae Pleistocene crocodylomorphs Pleistocene animals of South America Quaternary reptiles of South America Uquian Ensenadan Lujanian Pleistocene Venezuela Fossils of Venezuela Fossil taxa described in 2012