🐊 CrocodylomorphsCretaceousWell known
Deinosuchus
Deinosuchus
Deinosuchus shows that in the Cretaceous crocodylians could play the role of top predator alongside dinosaurs.
Image: Source: Jonathan Cutrer Derivative: User:MathKnight · CC BY 4.0 · Wikimedia Commons
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Sites on today's globe · 1 marker
Characteristics
- Scientific name
- Deinosuchus
- Period
- Late Cretaceous (Campanian)
- Lived
- 82–73 Ma (82 million years ago)
- Diet
- Carnivore
- Habitat
- Coast, Swamp
- Length (estimate)
- 10 m
- Mass (estimate)
- 4,000 kg
- Discovered/described
- 1909 · William Jacob Holland (description)
Description
Deinosuchus was a gigantic crocodylian related to the alligators, estimated at ten metres or longer. Bite marks on the bones of duck-billed dinosaurs and turtles match its teeth, so it could also attack or scavenge large dinosaurs. The first remains were found in North Carolina as early as the 1850s.
Habitat
Estuaries and coastal marshes on both sides of North America's inland sea.
Fossil sites
Big Bend, Texas
Aguja Formation
Cultural profile: United States →
Contemporaries in the database
Sources: Deinosuchus