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The name Pseudosuchia was originally given to a group of superficially crocodile-like prehistoric reptiles from the Triassic period, but fell out of use in the late 20th century, especially after the name Crurotarsi was established in 1990 to label the clade (evolutionary grouping) of archosaurs encompassing most reptiles previously identified as pseudosuchians.
The name Pseudosuchia, meaning "false crocodiles", has been used for over a century, and traditionally included aetosaurs. As a clade, Pseudosuchia includes the group Eusuchia, or "true crocodiles". Crocodylotarsi may have been named to remove confusion, but as a stem-based clade it is synonymous with Pseudosuchia.
Suchia is a clade of archosaurs containing the majority of pseudosuchians (crocodilians and their extinct relatives). It was defined as the least inclusive clade containing Aetosaurus ferratus, Rauisuchus tiradentes, Prestosuchus chiniquensis, and Crocodylus niloticus (the living Nile crocodile) by Nesbitt (2011). [1]
Crocodylomorpha is a group of pseudosuchian archosaurs that includes the crocodilians and their extinct relatives. They were the only members of Pseudosuchia to survive the end-Triassic extinction.
Many subsequent studies supported this phylogeny. Because Crurotarsi is defined by the inclusion of phytosaurs, the placement of phytosaurs outside Archosauria means that Crurotarsi must include all of Archosauria. Nesbitt reinstated Pseudosuchia as a clade name for crocodile-line archosaurs, using it as a stem-based taxon.
A Brazilian scientist has identified fossils of a small crocodile-like reptile that lived during the Triassic Period several million years before the first dinosaurs. The fossils of the predator ...
Ornithosuchidae is an extinct family of pseudosuchian archosaurs (distant relatives of modern crocodilians) from the Triassic period. Ornithosuchids were quadrupedal and facultatively bipedal (e.g. like chimpanzees), meaning that they had the ability to walk on two legs for short periods of time.
Traditionally, the order Thecodontia Owen, 1859 was divided into four suborders, the Proterosuchia (early primitive forms, another paraphyletic assemblage), Phytosauria (large crocodile-like semi-aquatic animals), the Aetosauria (armoured herbivores), and the Pseudosuchia, a wastebasket taxon intended to be paraphyletic to all later archosaurs (see e.g., Alfred Sherwood Romer's Vertebrate ...