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| Erpetosuchus sp. from North America |
Erpetosuchids are one of those groups that I saw reference
to somewhere, filed it away in the recesses of my brain, and didn’t remember
again until I read the new paper by Nesbitt et al. (2018) about the brain and
endocast of
Parringtonia gracilis. There’s a gorgeous skeletal
restoration on page 124 and that skull looked awfully familiar to me. Oh yes,
it looks a whole lot like the skull of
Erpetosuchus
grandi, a taxon I first read about thanks to Benton & Walker (2002)
probably a decade ago. With a little more digging, I found that the
Erpetosuchidae is a small but charismatic family of mid-sized pseudosuchians
with unusual dentition and surprisingly croc-like armor. This is one of those
small, obscure groups of Triassic hellasaurs that I like to put in the
spotlight, if even briefly.
