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  2. Wherefore art thou, Prestosuchus?

Wherefore art thou, Prestosuchus?

By laelaps on October 19, 2007.

i-3702ff1d8c78501cce431b275014a412-prestobw.jpg

The intimidating skull of Prestosuchus, taken at the AMNH.

I've been trying for quite some time now to get some information about a predatory member of the Order Rauisuchia, Prestosuchus chiniquensis so that I could write something substantial about it, but most of the references I've been able to get a hold of only mention it in reference to similar animals (i.e. Postosuchus, Saurosuchus, etc.). If anyone has any papers or technical literature they could send me on this animal (my e-mail can be found via the "contact" tab on this blog), I would be more grateful.

Tags
paleontology
archosaur
crurotarsi
fossil
Literature
Prestosuchus
rauisuchian

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I've got Baurusuchus, who looks to be a close relative. If you want it, it's yours, sir. Also, Prestosuchus looks decidedly evil. There are very few fossil animals that look, you know, evil, but Prestosuchus is definately one of them. Wierd antorbital fenestrae on that one.

No no no - Baurusuchus is a baurusuchid sebecosuchian crocodyliform, nothing to do with rauisuchians.

For rauisuchian pdfs, a good place to start is with Dave Gower's site here. You'll find Gower (2000) particularly useful. I'm going to be doing rauisuchians (and phytosaurs) at Tet Zoo some time (so far I've only done aetosaurs among Triassic crurotarsans), but it's not going to be for quite a while.

Zach;

Please send it on over if you can. I definitely need to brush up on by sebecosuchids and other creatures I haven't given proper attention to as yet.

I do agree that Prestosuchus is absolutely terrifying, though. I have some other pictures from the front that make it look even more sinister (perhaps I'll post them next week). I just love the mount though, and no trip to the AMNH is complete without a visit to see it.

Darren;

Thank you for the tip; I will check out the link as soon as I have a moment to breathe tomorrow. I'll be looking forward to your posts on rauisuchians and phytosaurs, too, especially since your posts on aetosaurs were so good. Keep up the excellent work and thanks for your help!

Here are the skulls to scale of the various classic "rauisuchid" taxa. The relationships of these forms relative to each other and to various other crurotarsans (ornithosuchids, the complex of ctenosauriscids, shuvosaurids, and the like) remains a problematic part of pseudosuchian phylogenetics. (Great, another example of pseudoalliteration to go with the one in my SVP talk...).