Benthosuchus
Benthosuchus is an extinct genus of temnospondyl amphibian from the Early Triassic of Russia. It was primarily aquatic, living in rivers and lakes. Multiple species are known, with the largest reaching about 2.5 meters in length.

Гав-Гав2020 · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- CapitosauriaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Temnospondyli
- Life habit
- amphibiousPBDB, for Temnospondyli
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Temnospondyli
- Environment
- brackish,freshwater,terrestrialPBDB, for Tetrapoda
Time the record covers
At most 5 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 251.902 Mya and 247 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
41 occurrences of Benthosuchus on record, most of them in the Early Triassic. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
41 occurrences- Early Triassic100%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
8 formations
- Staritskaya Formation27
- Kzylsaiskaya Formation3
- Rybinsk Formation · Vetluga Group2
- Kamennyi Yar Formation2
- Kopanaskya Formation1
- Kzylsai Formation1
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The named rock units Benthosuchus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 3 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Benthosuchus and its relatives
Early TriassicWhere Benthosuchus and its relatives were recorded in the Early Triassic.
Found in the same rock
39 taxa- Temnospondyli21 sites
- Chasmatosuchus9 sites
- Thoosuchus5 sites
- Dromotectum spinosum3 sites
- Microcnemus2 sites
- Qantas samarensis2 sites
- Rhynchocephalia2 sites
- Saurichthys proximus2 sites
- Wetlugasaurus2 sites
- Actinopterygii1 site
- Amphibia1 site
- Angusaurus tsylmensis1 site
- Archosauria1 site
- Bystrowianidae1 site
- Chasmatosuchus rossicus1 site
- Chauliodites sennikovi1 site
- Crocopoda1 site
- Gnathorhiza lozovskii1 site
- Gnathorhiza triassica1 site
- Limulitella volgensis1 site
- Microcnemus efremovi1 site
- Pleuromeia1 site
- Procolophonoidea1 site
- Proterosuchia1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 39 sites for Benthosuchus, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too. The 24 sharing the most are listed.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
6 references- Tetrapod localities from the Triassic of the SE of European Russia32
- New data on trematosauroid labyrinthodonts of Eastern Europe: 4. Genus Benthosuchus Efremov, 19373
- New Data on Trematosauroid Labyrinthodonts of Eastern Europe: 3. Qantas samarensis gen. et sp. nov.2
- A systematic revision and phylogenetic analysis of Triassic mastodonsauroids (Temnospondyli: Stereospondyli)2
- A New Benthosuchid (Amphibia: Temnospondyli) from the Lower Triassic of the Moscow Syncline1
- Predvaritel'noye opisaniye novykh form permskoy i triasovoy fauny nazemnykh pozvonochnykh SSSR [Preliminary description of new forms from the Permian and Triassic terrestrial vertebrate fauna of the USSR]1
Each of the 41 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Benthosuchus
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Гав-Гав2020
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Benthosuchus was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itCapitosauria through timeFormations of the Early TriassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Efremov 1936