Stratiotosuchus (from Greek, (stratiōtēs, "soldier") and (soûchos, "crocodile")) is an extinct genus of baurusuchid mesoeucrocodylian from the Adamantina Formation in Brazil. It lived during the Late Cretaceous. The first fossils were found in the 1980s, and the type species Stratiotosuchus maxhechti was named in 2001. A hyperpredator, it and other baurusuchids may have filled niches occupied elsewhere by theropod dinosaurs.
Stratiotosuchus (from Greek, (stratiōtēs, "soldier") and (soûchos, "crocodile")) is an extinct genus of baurusuchid mesoeucrocodylian from the Adamantina Formation in Brazil. It lived during the Late Cretaceous. The first fossils were found in the 1980s, and the type species Stratiotosuchus maxhechti was named in 2001. A hyperpredator, it and other baurusuchids may have filled niches occupied elsewhere by theropod dinosaurs.
==Description== Stratiotosuchus has a robust, laterally compressed skull that is long, among the largest known baurusuchids. While the holotype skull is slightly taphonomically compressed vertically, it was an overally long-snouted animal. The teeth are ziphodont, meaning that they are laterally compressed, curved, and serrated. Most baurusuchids have a reduced number of teeth, with four in their premaxilla and five in their maxilla, but Stratiotosuchus possessed only 3 premaxillary teeth on its holotype. Comparisons with modern crocodiles in regards to loss in tooth-count, the great size of the specimen, and lack of an open notch between both of its palpebrals resulting from fusion of the bones, suggest that Stratiotosuchus's specimen is a very mature individual. When the jaw is closed, the teeth of the upper jaw overlie those of the lower jaw and shear closely together. Stratiotosuchus has one large caniniform tooth in its premaxilla, and several large maxillary teeth behind it. An enlarged fourth dentary tooth in the lower jaw also forms a canine, and is visible when the jaw is closed.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).