Borealosuchus

Borealosuchus
Temporal range: Late Cretaceous - Eocene,
70.6–47.8 Ma[1]
Skeleton cast at the North Dakota Heritage Center & State Museum
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Clade: Archosauria
Clade: Pseudosuchia
Clade: Crocodylomorpha
Clade: Crocodyliformes
Clade: Eusuchia
Genus: †Borealosuchus
Brochu, 1997
Type species
Leidyosuchus sternbergii
(Gilmore, 1910)
Species
  • see text

Borealosuchus (meaning "northern crocodile") is an extinct genus of crocodyliforms that lived from the Late Cretaceous to the Eocene in North America. It was named by Christopher Brochu in 1997 for several species that had been assigned to Leidyosuchus. The species assigned to it are: B. sternbergii, the type species, from the Maastrichtian (Late Cretaceous) of Colorado, Montana, North Dakota, South Dakota, and Wyoming; B. acutidentatus, from the Paleocene of Saskatchewan; B. formidabilis, from the Paleocene of North Dakota;[2] B. griffithi, from the Paleocene of Alberta;[3] and B. wilsoni, from the Eocene of Wyoming.[2] B. formidabilis is particularly well-known, represented by the remains of many individuals from the Wannagan Creek site in North Dakota.[4] An indeterminate species is known from the Late Cretaceous Demopolis Chalk in Alabama.[5]

Borealosuchus was a mid-sized crocodyliform, with B. wilsoni measuring approximately 3.2–4.5 metres (10–15 ft) long.[6]

  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. ^ a b Brochu, C.A. (1997). "A review of "Leidyosuchus" (Crocodyliformes, Eusuchia) from the Cretaceous through Eocene of North America". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 17 (4): 679–697. doi:10.1080/02724634.1997.10011017.
  3. ^ Wu, X-C.; Brinkman, D.B.; Fox, R.C. (2001). "A new crocodylian (Archosauria) from the basal Paleocene of the Red Deer River Valley, southern Alberta". Canadian Journal of Earth Sciences. 38 (12): 1689–1704. doi:10.1139/cjes-38-12-1689.
  4. ^ Erickson, Bruce R. (1976). Osteology of the Early Eusuchian Crocodile Leidyosuchus formidabilis, sp. nov. The Science Museum of Minnesota St. Paul, Minnesota Monograph 2, Paleontology. St. Paul: The Science Museum of Minnesota. pp. 1–61.
  5. ^ Kejiri, T.; Ebersole, J.A.; Blewitt, H.L.; Ebersole, S.M. (2013). "An Overview of Late Cretaceous Vertebrates from Alabama". Bulletin of the Alabama Museum of Natural History. 31 (1): 46–71.
  6. ^ Iijima, M.; Kubo, T. (2020). "Vertebrae-Based Body Length Estimation in Crocodylians and Its Implication for Sexual Maturity and the Maximum Sizes". Integrative Organismal Biology. 2 (1). obaa042. doi:10.1093/iob/obaa042. PMC 7891683.