Elosuchus
Elosuchus is an extinct genus of neosuchian crocodyliform that lived during the Middle Cretaceous of what is now Africa.

Nobu Tamura ( http://spinops.blogspot.com ) · CC BY 3.0 · via Wikidata/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
- DyrosauroideaPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Pseudosuchia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Mesoeucrocodylia
Time the record covers
At most 13 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 106.3 Mya and 93.9 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
6 occurrences of Elosuchus on record, most of them in the Late Cretaceous. 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
6 occurrencesThese 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
3 formations
- Gara Samani Formation1
- Gara Sbaa Formation · Kem Kem Group1
- Echkar Formation · Tegama Group1
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The named rock units Elosuchus 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.
Elosuchus and its relatives
Late CretaceousWhere Elosuchus and its relatives were recorded in the Late Cretaceous.
Found in the same rock
43 taxa- Onchopristis numidus3 sites
- Lepidotes2 sites
- Spinosaurus aegyptiacus2 sites
- Theropoda2 sites
- Adrianaichthys sp.1 site
- Aegyptosaurus baharijensis1 site
- Araripemydidae1 site
- Arganodus tiguidiensis1 site
- Axelrodichthys lavocati1 site
- Bahariasaurus ingens1 site
- Bawitius1 site
- Calamopleurus africanus1 site
- Carcharodontosaurus1 site
- Carcharodontosaurus saharicus1 site
- Ceratodus1 site
- Ceratodus protopteroides1 site
- cf. Lavocatodus humei1 site
- Coelurosauria1 site
- Dinosauria1 site
- Distobatidae1 site
- Eotrigonodon tabroumiti1 site
- Fortignathus felixi1 site
- Galianemys emringeri1 site
- Galianemys whitei1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Elosuchus, 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
4 references- Revision and phylogenetic affinities of Elosuchus (Crocodyliformes)3
- New cranial remains of the broad-nosed crocodile Elosuchus (Pholidosauridae; Mesoeucocodrylia) and its palaeoecological implications1
- Revision of the enigmatic crocodyliform Elosuchus felixi de Lapparent de Broin, 2002 from the Lower–Upper Cretaceous boundary of Niger: potential evidence for an early origin of the clade Dyrosauridae1
- Elosuchus, a new genus of crocodile from the Lower Cretaceous of the north of Africa1
Each of the 6 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 Elosuchus
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- Nobu Tamura ( http://spinops.blogspot.com )
- Licence
- CC BY 3.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Elosuchus 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
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Elosuchus”
- 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 itDyrosauroidea through timeFormations of the Late CretaceousThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. de Lapparent de Broin 2002