Langstonia

Langstonia (meaning "[crocodile] of Langston", in honor of paleontologist Wann Langston, Jr.) is an extinct genus of notosuchian crocodylomorph of the family Sebecidae. It lived in the middle Miocene (specifically in the Laventan land-mammal age), in the "Monkey Beds" of the Colombian Villavieja Formation. Langstonia was named in 2007 by Alfredo Paolillo and Omar Linares for fossils originally described by Langston in 1965 as Sebecus huilensis. Thus, the type species is L. huilensis. == Discovery and naming == left|thumb|The Tatacoa Desert, in which has been discovered numerous Miocene fossils, including to Langstonia. The first fossils of Langstonia were discovered in the province of Huila in Colombia by the Spanish geologist José Royo y Gómez, during the expeditions in the region by the American paleontologist Robert Stirton. They were found in the area called the Tatacoa Desert at the locality V-4517, characterized by gray claystone overlying sandstone sediments. These have been named the Honda Group, of the La Venta fauna, the geological formation named the "lechos de monos" (Monkey Beds) in 1945. Many of the remains discovered were then sent to the collections of the Museum of Paleontology at the University of California, Berkeley (UCMP), where they are still housed. The description of the specimens did not come until 1965, when the American paleontologist Wann Langston Jr. published his monograph Fossil Crocodylians from Colombia, in which he made a detailed analysis of several fossils of crocodylomorphs in Colombia, including the remains of other species as Purussaurus neivensis, Mourasuchus atopus, Gryposuchus colombianus and Charactosuchus fieldsi (plus a possible dyrosaurid). As for the sebecid material he designated the dentary UCMP 37877 as the holotype of a new species a fragmentary taxon, which he called Sebecus huilensis; thus extending the time range of this genus and the family, hitherto known only from remains of the Eocene of Argentina. Langston gave the taxon a new species considering that besides being larger, as the dentary fragment is 68% larger than the Argentine species, S. icaeorhinus, it was also proportionally thinner, and had with more recurved teeth being laterally compressed. Additionally Langston referred a series of zyphodont teeth in the area found this species, with some teeth referred to as similar but classified generally to Sebecus sp., which do not come from the Miocene but the Eocene, found in the department of Santander in Colombia.

Subsequently, Éric Buffetaut and Robert Hoffstetter (1977) reported from the Ipururo Formation in the Amazon region of Peru the presence of a huge cranial portion (area of the snout), referring it to this genus, and although its age coincides with S. huilensis, distinguished it through it being larger and more robust.