Piscogavialis
Piscogavialis is an extinct genus of gryposuchine gavialid crocodylian. Two species have been described, the type species P. jugaliperforatus and P. laberintoensis. Fossils of Piscogavialis have been found from the Mio-Pliocene Pisco Formation of the Sacaco Basin in southern Peru in 1998, where it coexisted with the much smaller gavialid Sacacosuchus.

Ghedoghedo · 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
- GavialidaePBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Crocodylia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Mesoeucrocodylia
Time the record covers
At least 10 million years on record.
The record covers at least 15.98 Mya to 5.333 Mya. No occurrence read is dated outside 20.45 Mya to 3.6 Mya.
8 occurrences of Piscogavialis 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
8 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
2 formations
Loading coastlines…
The named rock units Piscogavialis has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Piscogavialis and its relatives
MioceneWhere Piscogavialis and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
96 taxa- Phalacrocorax4 sites
- Alosidae3 sites
- Cetotheriidae3 sites
- Megatheriidae3 sites
- Monachinae3 sites
- Myliobatis3 sites
- Otodus megalodon3 sites
- Phocoenidae3 sites
- Piscobalaena nana3 sites
- Spheniscidae3 sites
- Spheniscus urbinai3 sites
- Sula3 sites
- Acrophoca2 sites
- Acrophoca longirostris2 sites
- Ariidae2 sites
- Balaenopteridae2 sites
- Carcharodon hastalis2 sites
- Carnivora2 sites
- Crocodylia2 sites
- Cyonasua2 sites
- Pelagornis2 sites
- Pelagornithidae2 sites
- Phocidae2 sites
- Piscolithax2 sites
The Paleobiology Database records 8 sites for Piscogavialis, 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- Miocene fossils from the southeastern Pacific shed light on the last radiation of marine crocodylians5
- Did the giant extinct shark Carcharocles megalodon target small prey? Bite marks on marine mammal remains from the late Miocene of Peru1
- Ramphastosula (aves, Sulidae): a new genus from the early Pliocene of the Pisco Formation, Peru1
- The cranium of Piscogavialis jugalipeforatus n. nen., n. sp. (Gavialidae, Crocodylia) from the Miocene of Peru1
Each of the 8 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. Each entry links to doi.org. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Piscogavialis
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Ghedoghedo
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Piscogavialis 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 itGavialidae through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Kraus 1998