Melanosuchus niger

Uncredited · 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
- MelanosuchusPBDB
- Diet
- carnivorePBDB, for Crocodylia
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- marinePBDB, for Mesoeucrocodylia
Time the record covers
At most 4.4 million years on record.
The one occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 11.63 Mya and 7.246 Mya, which is a dating window rather than a span.
1 occurrence of Melanosuchus niger on record, most of them in the Miocene. The Paleobiology Database records this as a living group, and the chart stops with its fossils rather than at the present. 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
1 occurrences- Miocene100%
These 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
1 formation
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The named rock units Melanosuchus niger has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.
Melanosuchus niger and its relatives
MioceneWhere Melanosuchus niger and its relatives were recorded in the Miocene.
Found in the same rock
8 taxa- Caiman crocodilus1 site
- Caimaninae1 site
- Chelus1 site
- Crocodyliformes1 site
- Mourasuchus1 site
- Pleurodira1 site
- Podocnemididae1 site
- Toxodontidae1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 1 site for Melanosuchus niger, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
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
1 referenceEach of the 1 occurrence 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 content2

Picture of Melanosuchus niger
- Source
- Wikidata/Commons
- Credit
- nobody named on the record
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
Photogrammetry
- Source
- MorphoSource
- Credit
- Kwata Association
- Licence
- not stated by the source
- Commercial use
- cannot be read from the licence given — check the record
- Specimen
- Melanosuchus niger · KWATA:JAGUARS:R917
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itMelanosuchus through timeFormations of the MioceneThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Spix 1825