Apachesuchus

Apachesuchus is an extinct genus of aetosaur from the Late Triassic of New Mexico. It is only known from several paramedian osteoderms discovered in Quay County in eastern New Mexico. This area belongs to the late Norian-age Quay Member of the Redonda Formation. Unique among aetosaurs, its osteoderms are nearly completely smooth, without strong pits or grooves.^[1] The left dorsal paramedian has a relatively high width-to-length ration (about 3.25), suggesting that Apachesuchus is a wide-bodied aetosaur within the clade Typothoracinae.^[2]

Apachesuchus Temporal range: Late Triassic, late Norian
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Reptilia
Clade:	Archosauria
Clade:	Pseudosuchia
Order:	†Aetosauria
Family:	†Stagonolepididae
Subfamily:	†Typothoracinae
Genus:	†Apachesuchus Spielmann and Lucas, 2012
Species
†A. heckerti Spielmann and Lucas, 2012 (type)

The holotype and referred material of Apachesuchus were initially described by Heckert et al. (2001), who assigned them to the South American aetosaur Neoaetosauroides.^[3] However, this comparison was based on Neoaetosauroides osteoderms which had been overprepared, removing their surface texture. In their 2012 monograph on vertebrates of the Redonda Formation, Justin Spielmann and Spencer Lucas decided that the material reported by Heckert et al. was sufficiently distinct to be recognized as a new genus and species. They named it Apachesuchus heckerti, in honor of Andrew Heckert.^[1]

References

1. J. A. Spielmann and S. G. Lucas. 2012. Tetrapod fauna of the Upper Triassic Redonda formation, East-Central New Mexico: the characteristic assemblage of the Apachean land-vertebrate faunachron. New Mexico Museum of Natural History and Science, Bulletin 55:1-119.
2. Parker, William G. (2016-01-21). "Revised phylogenetic analysis of the Aetosauria (Archosauria: Pseudosuchia); assessing the effects of incongruent morphological character sets". PeerJ. 4: e1583. doi:10.7717/peerj.1583. ISSN 2167-8359. PMC 4727975. PMID 26819845.
3. Heckert et al. (2001) Heckert AB, Lucas SG, Hunt AP, Harris JD. A giant phytosaur (Reptilia: Archosauria) skull from the Redonda Formation (Upper Triassic: Apachean) of east-central New Mexico. In: Lucas SG, Ulmer-Scholle DS, editors. Geology of the Llano Estacado, 52nd Field Conference. Socorro: New Mexico Geological Society; 2001. pp. 169–176. (New Mexico Geological Society Guidebook).

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