🐊🚨Late Christmas gift and great start for 2024 ! Meet Varanosuchus sakonnakhonensis, a newly described atoposaurid taxon from the Cretaceous of Thailand, just published in @ZoolJLinnSoc. Article available here: academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/adv… and thread below.
- 🐊🚨Late Christmas gift and great start for 2024 ! Meet Varanosuchus sakonnakhonensis, a newly described atoposaurid taxon from the Cretaceous of Thailand, just published in @ZoolJLinnSoc. Article available here: academic.oup.com/zoolinnean/adv… and thread below.
We describe three specimens belonging to this new taxon from the Phu Sung locality (Sao Khua Formation, Early Cretaceous). The first one is an almost complete skeleton, the second a nicely preserved skull and the third one a skull table.GIFWe were also able to produce some nice 3D reconstructions via CT-scan and surface scanning as part of this French-Thai collaboration. All models are available in the Supplementaries.Our phylogenetic analysis confirms the taxonomic content of Atoposauridae and Paralligatoridae, their position within Neosuchia and underlines the remaining difficulties towards reaching a stable definition of Eusuchia.Those new specimens also bring new evidence about the paleoecology of atoposaurids, which might have had some both semi-aquatic and terrestrial habits. Here is a tentative reconstruction by @paleotoon:I am very happy to have been able to work on those specimens as part of my PhD. Special thanks to @Lauprasert73, @paleotoon and other Thai co-authors and staff that have facilitated my stay in Thailand, as well as other co-authors.
