Thalattosuchia
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Thalattosuchia is a clade of mostly marine crocodylomorphs from the Early Jurassic to the Early Cretaceous that had a cosmopolitan distribution. They are colloquially referred to as marine crocodiles or sea crocodiles, though they are not members of Crocodilia and records from Thailand and China suggest that some members lived in freshwater. The clade contains two major subgroupings, the Teleosauroidea and Metriorhynchoidea. Teleosauroids are not greatly specialised for oceanic life, with back osteoderms similar to other crocodyliformes. Within Metriorhynchoidea, the Metriorhynchidae displayed
In the Vinony graph
Vinony's link graph records 434 inbound references to Thalattosuchia, and connects out to Crocodylomorpha, Metriorhynchus and Dyrosaurus.
It sits within the topics Early Cretaceous crocodylomorphs, Early Cretaceous extinctions and Jurassic crocodylomorphs.
Vinony links it to 19 Wikipedia language editions.
Wikidata facts
- Parent taxon
- Mesoeucrocodylia
- Image
- Metriorhynchus jaekeli - Naturmuseum Senckenberg - DSC02182.JPG
Show 3 more facts
- taxon name
- Thalattosuchia
- topic's main category
- Category:Thalattosuchia
- Commons category
- Thalattosuchia
Sources (1)
via Wikidata · CC0
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Encyclopedic overview
6 sectionsContents
- Taxonomy
- Evolutionary history
- Timeline of genera
- See also
- References
- Further reading
Thalattosuchia is a clade of mostly marine crocodylomorphs from the Early Jurassic to the Early Cretaceous that had a cosmopolitan distribution. They are colloquially referred to as marine crocodiles or sea crocodiles, though they are not members of Crocodilia and records from Thailand and China suggest that some members lived in freshwater. The clade contains two major subgroupings, the Teleosauroidea and Metriorhynchoidea. Teleosauroids are not greatly specialised for oceanic life, with back osteoderms similar to other crocodyliformes. Within Metriorhynchoidea, the Metriorhynchidae displayed extreme adaptions for life in the open ocean, including the transformation of limbs into flippers, the development of a tail fluke, and smooth, scaleless skin, and probably gave live birth, seemingly uniquely among archosaurs.
==Taxonomy==
Excerpted from Wikipedia’s “Thalattosuchia” article, available under the CC BY-SA 4.0 licence.