Charactosuchus

Charactosuchus is an extinct genus of crocodilian. It was assigned to the family Crocodylidae in 1988. Specimens have been found in Colombia, Brazil, Jamaica, and possibly Florida and South Carolina. It was gharial-like in appearance with its long narrow snout but bore no relation to them, being more closely related to modern crocodiles than to gharials.

Charactosuchus

Yale Peabody Museum · CC0 · via GBIF. 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
CrocodylidaePBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Crocodylia
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
Environment
marinePBDB, for Mesoeucrocodylia

Time the record covers

At least 29 million years on record.

The record covers at least 41.03 Mya to 11.63 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 48.07 Mya to 7.246 Mya.

Eocene — about 2 of 9 occurrencesEoceneOligocene — about 0 of 9 occurrencesMiocene — about 7 of 9 occurrencesMiocene49–47 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences47–46 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences46–45 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences45–43 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences43–42 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences42–40 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences15–14 Mya — about 0.2 occurrences14–12 Mya — about 1 occurrence12–11 Mya — about 2 occurrences11–9.3 Mya — about 2 occurrences9.3–7.8 Mya — about 2 occurrences7.8–6.4 Mya — about 0.7 occurrences41.03 Mya11.63 Mya48.9 Mya6.4 Mya

9 occurrences of Charactosuchus on record, most of them in the Miocene. 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

9 occurrences

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

5 formations

Solimoes — 10.12°S, 66.88°WChapelton — 18.33°N, 77.92°WChapelton — 18.18°N, 77.50°WVillavieja — 3.26°N, 75.19°WSolimões — 10.13°S, 67.81°WUrumaco — 11.22°N, 70.24°W

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The named rock units Charactosuchus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Charactosuchus and its relatives

Miocene

Where Charactosuchus and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.

Found in the same rock

117 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 4 sites for Charactosuchus, 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

7 references

Each of the 9 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 Charactosuchus

Source
GBIF
Credit
Yale Peabody Museum
Licence
CC0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Charactosuchus was found in Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access and MorphoSource were 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 itCrocodylidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Langston 1965