Tatrasuchus

Tatrasuchus is an extinct genus of temnospondyl from the Middle Triassic of Poland and Germany. It is classified as a member of the family Cyclotosauridae or Mastodonsauridae. It is closely related to the genus Cyclotosaurus. The type species, Tatrasuchus kulczyckii, was named in 1996. Damiani (2001) considered genus Kupferzellia Schoch (1997) from the Middle Triassic of Germany to be a junior synonym of Tatrasuchus, and recombined its type species, K. wildi as the second species of Tatrasuchus. This classification was followed by some authors, e.g. Fortuny et al. (2011); other authors, e.g. Schoch (2008), maintain Tatrasuchus and Kupferzellia as distinct genera. However, Schoch & Moreno (2024) synonymized the two genera, maintaining T. wildi as a distinct species from T. kulczyckii.

Tatrasuchus

Ghedoghedo · CC BY-SA 3.0 · 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
MastodonsauridaePBDB
Diet
carnivorePBDB, for Temnospondyli
Life habit
amphibiousPBDB, for Temnospondyli
Motility
actively mobilePBDB, for Temnospondyli
Environment
brackish,freshwater,terrestrialPBDB, for Tetrapoda

Time the record covers

At most 6.5 million years on record.

Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 243.43 Mya and 237 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.

Middle Triassic — about 6 of 6 occurrencesMiddle TriassicLate Triassic — about 0 of 6 occurrences243–243 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences243–243 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences243–243 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences243–242 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences242–242 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences242–242 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences242–242 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences242–241 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences241–241 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences241–241 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences241–241 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences241–240 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences240–240 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences240–240 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences240–240 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences240–239 Mya — about 0.1 occurrences239–239 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences239–239 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences239–239 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences239–238 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences238–238 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences238–238 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences238–238 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences238–237 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences237–237 Mya — about 0.5 occurrences237–237 Mya — about 0.4 occurrences243.9 Mya236.5 Mya

6 occurrences of Tatrasuchus on record, most of them in the Middle Triassic. 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

6 occurrences

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

3 formations

Erfurt — 49.21°N, 9.68°EErfurt — 49.00°N, 9.77°EErfurt — 49.08°N, 9.89°EErfurt — 49.07°N, 9.76°EPartnach — 47.09°N, 9.69°EFurkaska — 49.27°N, 19.81°E

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The named rock units Tatrasuchus has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed.

Tatrasuchus and its relatives

Middle Triassic

Where Tatrasuchus and its relatives were recorded in the Middle Triassic.

Found in the same rock

51 taxa

The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Tatrasuchus, 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

Each of the 6 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. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.

Media and terms

Media content1

Picture of Tatrasuchus

Credit
Ghedoghedo
Licence
CC BY-SA 3.0
Commercial use
the licence allows it

No 3D scan of Tatrasuchus was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.

Smithsonian Open Access was 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 itMastodonsauridae through timeFormations of the Middle TriassicThe world it lived on

Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Maryanska and Shishkin 1996