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Bernissartia

Extinct genus of reptiles

Bernissartia
Summary

Extinct genus of reptiles

Bernissartia ('of Bernissart') is an extinct genus of neosuchian crocodyliform that lived in the Early Cretaceous, around 130 million years ago.

Restoration
Lateral view of skull

At only 60 cm in length, Bernissartia is one of the smallest crocodyliforms that ever lived. It resembled modern species in many respects, and was probably semi-aquatic. It had long, pointed teeth at the front of the jaws that would have been of use in catching fish, but broad and flat teeth at the back of its jaws that were suited for crushing hard food, such as shellfish, and possibly bones.

It is known primarily from skulls and skeletons found in the Sainte-Barbe Clays Formation of Belgium and the Camarillas Formation of Spain. Less complete material has been referred to Bernissartia from the United Kingdom and North America.

References

References

  1. (6 September 2021). "Phylogenetic analysis of a new morphological dataset elucidates the evolutionary history of Crocodylia and resolves the long-standing gharial problem". [[PeerJ]].
  2. Jeremy E. Martin, Thierry Smith, Céline Salaviale, Jerôme Adrien & Massimo Delfino. (2020). "Virtual reconstruction of the skull of Bernissartia fagesii and current understanding of the neosuchian-eusuchian transition". Journal of Systematic Palaeontology.
  3. (1999). "The Marshall Illustrated Encyclopedia of Dinosaurs and Prehistoric Animals". Marshall Editions.
Wikipedia Source

This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page.

neosuchia early-cretaceous-crocodylomorphs-of-europe cretaceous-england fossils-of-great-britain cretaceous-spain fossils-of-spain camarillas-formation la-huérguina-formation fossil-taxa-described-in-1883 taxa-named-by-louis-dollo prehistoric-pseudosuchian-genera
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