West African slender-snouted crocodile

West African slender-snouted crocodile
Temporal range: Miocene – Recent, 11.6–0 Ma[1]
West African slender-snouted crocodile at the porte dorée aquarium in Paris, France
CITES Appendix I (CITES)[3]
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Clade: Archosauromorpha
Clade: Archosauriformes
Order: Crocodilia
Family: Crocodylidae
Genus: Mecistops
Species:
M. cataphractus
Binomial name
Mecistops cataphractus
(Cuvier, 1825)
Synonyms[4]
  • Crocodylus cataphractus Cuvier, 1825
  • Mecistops bennettii Gray, 1844

The West African slender-snouted crocodile (Mecistops cataphractus), or slender-snouted crocodile, is a critically endangered species of African crocodile.[5] It is one of five species of crocodile in Africa, the other four being the Central African slender-snouted, Nile, West African and dwarf crocodiles.

The slender-snouted crocodile (M. cataphractus) was thought to be distributed across west Africa and into central Africa but the central African species has been separated as the Central African slender-snouted crocodile (M. leptorhynchus) based on studies in 2014 and 2018 that indicated that both were distinct species. The name cataphractus is retained for the West African species as that species was described first based on specimens from western Africa.[6] The two species diverged about 6.5–7.5 mya, living in different river drainage zones that were geographically separated from each other by the Cameroon Line.[7]

  1. ^ Rio, Jonathan P.; Mannion, Philip D. (6 September 2021). "Phylogenetic analysis of a new morphological dataset elucidates the evolutionary history of Crocodylia and resolves the long-standing gharial problem". PeerJ. 9: e12094. doi:10.7717/peerj.12094. PMC 8428266. PMID 34567843.
  2. ^ Shirley, M.H. (2014). "Mecistops cataphractus". IUCN Red List of Threatened Species. 2014: e.T5660A3044332. doi:10.2305/IUCN.UK.2014-1.RLTS.T5660A3044332.en. Retrieved 19 November 2021.
  3. ^ "Appendices | CITES". cites.org. Retrieved 2022-01-14.
  4. ^ Cite error: The named reference RDB was invoked but never defined (see the help page).
  5. ^ Brochu, C. A.; Storrs, G. W. (2012). "A giant crocodile from the Plio-Pleistocene of Kenya, the phylogenetic relationships of Neogene African crocodylines, and the antiquity of Crocodylus in Africa". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 32 (3): 587. Bibcode:2012JVPal..32..587B. doi:10.1080/02724634.2012.652324. S2CID 85103427.
  6. ^ Shirley, M. H.; Carr, A. N.; Nestler, J. H.; Vliet, K. A.; Brochu, C. A. (2018-10-24). "Systematic revision of the living African Slender-snouted Crocodiles (Mecistops Gray, 1844)". Zootaxa. 4504 (2): 151–193. doi:10.11646/zootaxa.4504.2.1. ISSN 1175-5334. PMID 30486023. S2CID 54146247.
  7. ^ Shirley, M. H.; Vliet, K. A.; Carr, A. N.; Austin, J. D. (2014). "Rigorous approaches to species delimitation have significant implications for African crocodilian systematics and conservation". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences. 281 (1776): 20132483. doi:10.1098/rspb.2013.2483. PMC 3871313. PMID 24335982.