Stolokrosuchus is an extinct genus of crocodyliforms found in the Early Cretaceous Elrhaz Formation, Niger. It is known from a nearly complete skull displaying a narrow, highly elongated and tubular snout similar to modern gharials. The classification of Stolokrosuchus has been a matter of debate, it was originally considered to be a member of the family Peirosauridae, but later studies also recovered it as possibly closely related to mahajangasuchids or more recently as a member of the family Itasuchidae. While all of these placements would classify Stolokrosuchus as a notosuchian, other stud
Stolokrosuchus is an extinct genus of crocodyliforms found in the Early Cretaceous Elrhaz Formation, Niger. It is known from a nearly complete skull displaying a narrow, highly elongated and tubular snout similar to modern gharials. The classification of Stolokrosuchus has been a matter of debate, it was originally considered to be a member of the family Peirosauridae, but later studies also recovered it as possibly closely related to mahajangasuchids or more recently as a member of the family Itasuchidae. While all of these placements would classify Stolokrosuchus as a notosuchian, other studies have proposed a closer relationship to Neosuchia, although these results have been considered to be possibly influenced by its elongated snout. Stolokrosuchus is thought to have been a semi-aquatic animal like modern crocodiles and may have fed on fish and other agile prey present in the waterways of the Paleo-Tegama River System. The type and only known species is S. lapparenti.
==History and naming== Stolokrosuchus was described in 2000 by Hans Larsson and Boubacar Gado on the basis of the holotype specimen MNN GDF600, an almost complete skull, alongside a right angular found alongside the skull and a left mandible found not far from the other material. The fossils come from the GAD 5 site of the Aptian to Albian Elrhaz Formation in Niger. The same site has later also yielded the remains of isolated teeth assigned to Stolokrosuchus.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).