Chroniosuchia

Chroniosuchia is a group of tetrapods that lived from the Middle Permian to Late Triassic in northern Pangaea in what is now Eurasia, including Laos, Kyrgyzstan, China, Germany and Russia. Chroniosuchians are often thought to be reptiliomorphs, but some recent phylogenetic analyses suggest instead that they are stem-tetrapods. They were all rather short limbed with a strong tail and elongated snout, somewhat resembling modern crocodiles. The group is traditionally considered to be a suborder or order of labyrinthodonts. Chroniosuchians likely had ecological niches as riverside predators, and may have been outcompeted by semiaquatic true reptiles such as phytosaurs in the late Triassic. Most forms bore a heavy armour of scutes along the back, possibly for protection against land born predators like therapsids, or to strengthen the axial skeleton for terrestrial locomotion. Indeed, femoral microanatomy of Chroniosaurus suggests that it was amphibious to terrestrial.

==Description== The most distinguishing features of chroniosuchians are the rows of interlocking bony plates called osteoderms that run along their backs from head to tail. They are the most commonly found remains of chroniosuchians. Each osteoderm is paired with a single vertebra. The osteoderms are flat plates connected to the neural arches of vertebra by an extension of bone on their undersurfaces. The front margin of each osteoderm has a pair of "anterior wings" that slip into a notch in the posterior margin of the osteoderm in front of it.