Abstract
Diverse crocodyliforms have been discovered in recent years in Cretaceous rocks on southern landmasses formerly composing Gondwana. We report here on six species from the Sahara with an array of trophic adaptations that significantly deepen our current understanding of African crocodyliform diversity during the Cretaceous period. We describe two of these species (Anatosuchus minor, Araripesuchus wegeneri) from nearly complete skulls and partial articulated skeletons from the Lower Cretaceous Elrhaz Formation (Aptian-Albian) of Niger. The remaining four species (Araripesuchus rattoides sp. n., Kaprosuchus saharicus gen. n. sp. n., Laganosuchus thaumastos gen. n. sp. n., Laganosuchus maghrebensis gen. n. sp. n.) come from contemporaneous Upper Cretaceous formations (Cenomanian) in Niger and Morocco.
RatCroc — Araripesuchus rattoides Sereno & Larsson, 2009
Genus Araripesuchus
†A. gomesii Price, 1959 (type)
†A. wegeneri Buffetaut, 1981
†A. patagonicus Ortega et al., 2000
†A. buitreraensis Pol & Apesteguia, 2005
†A. tsangatsangana Turner, 2006
†A. rattoides Sereno & Larsson, 2009
DogCroc — Araripesuchus wegeneri Buffetaut, 1981
Sereno, P.C.; Larsson, H.C.E. 2009. Cretaceous Crocodyliforms from the Sahara. ZooKeys 28: 1–143. doi: http://dx.doi.org/10.3897/zookeys.28.325.
