AbstractThe fourth complete skull of the marine crocodilian
Machimosaurus von Meyer, 1837 is hereby described together with an associated complete mandible and disarticulated postcranial elements from the Kimmeridgian of Neuffen, Germany. Although the genus has been described fairly recently on the basis of two nearly complete skulls, their state of preservation did not allow a thorough examination of the entire skull anatomy. Here, we add new information with the description of nicely preserved cranial and mandibular elements of a single individual attributable to
Machimosaurus hugii von Meyer, 1837. The diagnosis is updated for the genus and for the species
M. hugii and challenges the validity of the second species
M. mosae (Liénard, 1876). Moreover, previous assumption that
Steneosaurus obtusidens Andrews, 1913 is a junior synonym of
Machimosaurus hugii is not supported by our observations. Notably,
M. hugii differs from
S. obtusidens by a lower tooth count, the morphology of the dentition, the shape of the supratemporal fenestrae and the absence of an antorbital fenestra. Comparative anatomy and a phylogenetic analysis show that
Machimosaurus is more closely related to the genus
Steneosaurus than to
Teleosaurus cadomensis (Lamouroux, 1820).
doi:
10.1002/mmng.201300009