Puercosuchus (translated literally as "Puerco River crocodile") is an extinct genus of archosauromorph reptile from the Late Triassic (Norian) of what is now Arizona, North America. It includes only the type species P. traverorum, and was described and named in 2022. Puercosuchus is known mainly from two bonebeds in the Blue Mesa Member of the Chinle Formation, preserving the mixed remains of multiple individuals in each one representing almost the entire skeleton.
It is a member of the Azendohsauridae, a clade of Triassic reptiles that was initially recognised by adaptations for herbivory. However, Puercosuchus and its close relatives in the subclade Malerisaurinae retained the carnivorous diet and body form ancestral to archosauromorphs. Unlike non-malerisaurine azendohsaurids, Puercosuchus had a long and shallow snout with sharp, blade-like teeth similar to those of carnivorous dinosaurs.
Despite its seemingly ancestral morphology and ecology, Puercosuchus is the youngest known genus of azendohsaurid in the world. The discovery of Puercosuchus allowed palaeontologists to recognise similar bones and teeth that had been collected from Late Triassic southwestern North America in the past as belonging to it or similar animals, acting as a sort of "rosetta stone" for malerisaurine azendohsaurid anatomy.
Description Puercosuchus was a mid-sized quadrupedal reptile that broadly resembled other large azendohsaurids in general shape. It was robustly built–albeit less bulky than Azendohsaurus or Shringasaurus–with deep shoulders, sprawling limbs and the characteristically long and raised neck of azendohsaurids. Unlike other large azendohsaurids, its skull was more like those of earlier predatory archosauromorphs, with a proportionally longer and lower snout as well as recurved teeth with fine serrations. The tail of Puercosuchus is also longer and more tapering compared to the shortened tails of other large azendohsaurids. Puercosuchus is known by almost its entire skeleton, but because its bones have only been found disarticulated and mixed together in bonebeds with few associated remains its overall limb and body proportions cannot be determined.
Skull The skull of Puercosuchus is longer and lower than those of non-malerisaurine azendohsaurids, similar to that of Prolacerta, with a shallow and triangular-shaped maxilla lacking the tall ascending process of Azendohsaurus and possessing at least 19 teeth (compared to the 12–14 in the maxilla of Azendohsaurus). Like other azendohsaurids the nasal bones and premaxilla do not meet to form an internarial bar separating the nostrils, leaving a single confluent opening for the nostrils that faces up and forwards at the tip of the snout.
Several bones from the roof of the skull are known, including the frontals, prefrontals, postfrontals and parietal bones, although the fragmentary parietal preserves little information on the surrounding structures (namely the upper temporal fenestra and pineal foramen). The frontals are roughly rectangular and lack bony ornamentation (including along the margin of the orbits, unlike Azendohsaurus) but are drawn up to form a low bony keel down the middle of the skull where the two frontals meet. This is a unique to Puercosuchus among azendohsaurids. The prefrontals form the curved top front corner of the orbits. Unlike the frontals, the bone around the orbital margin is thickened and rugose. It has two fossae, a large triangular one on the inside surface and another smaller one laterally at its upper front edge. Its articulations with other bones of the skull are unclear. The postfrontal is a tall bone forming the rear edge of the orbit, it has a ridge of bone on its lower process that runs up and back to rim the edge of the lower temporal fenestra (the opening in the skull behind the eye). Its upper surface behind the orbital rim is flat and ornamented with striations.
The quadrate bone sits at the rear corner of the skull, and like other azendohsaurids its head sports a prominent hook projecting back from the skull. However, this hook is sharper and more pointed in Puercosuchus than other azendohsaurids. This hook sits above the otic notch where the tympanic membrane, or eardrum, would have sat just behind the quadrate.
The mandible is known by the tooth-bearing dentary, the angular, prearticular, and the fused surangular and articular. The dentary is long, slender and straight edged along its length, although it is slightly expanded down towards its tip (though not deflected down as in Azendohsaurus) with the bottom edge curving up at the tip. The back of the dentary connects to the postdentary bones, namely the surganular above and the angular below. The angular is elongate, deepest at the front and is straight edged along the bottom. There is no sign of a mandibular fenestra behind the angular, and it articulates with the prearticular on its inner surface. The surangular sports a raised triangular coronoid eminence just behind the dentary, which then tapers downwards through to the fused articular and to the jaw joint. The retroarticular process of the articular, which attached to the jaw-opening depressor mandibulae muscle, is short and hooked upwards.
Braincase Numerous bones of the braincase are preserved. The single supraoccipital, paired opisthotics and prootics are fused together. The supraoccipital forms the upper rear surface of the skull and has a pair of short processes that would have contacted the parietals in front. Beneath it, the paired opisthotics on either side of the braincase have long but narrow paraoccipital processes that are vertically expanded at their tips. Another processes that descends below each opisthotic is pierced by a foramen not known in any other azendohsaurid, and its function is unclear. The prootics within the skull are fused to the front of each opisthotic, and they curve up and inwards to partially roof the brain cavity. The prootic has two processes that meet the opisthotic, a lateral process that runs along the paraoccipital processes, and a ventral process that contributes to the fenestra ovalis (the opening to the inner ear).
The ventral prootic processes also contacts the parabasisphenoid, a single bone which forms the floor of the braincase. Around half of the length of the parabasisphenoid is the cultriform process, a long and narrow blade-like process that extends along the middle of the palate. The cultriform process of Puercosuchus is deflected upwards but kinked in the middle so that its front half continues horizontally. Both the basipterygoid processes (contacting the pterygoid bones beneath it) in front and the basal tubera at the rear project out and down from the parabasisphenoid on either side. Unusually, Puercosuchus had a single tooth between the basipterygoid processes at the base of the cultriform processes, a trait unknown in other azendohsaurids and typically seen in more basal diapsids.
Teeth The teeth of Puercosuchus are heterodont, with noticeably different sizes and shapes throughout the jaw. The first tooth in each premaxilla is long and slightly procumbent (projecting forwards from the jaw). The first tooth also lacks serrations, while the remaining three premaxillary teeth are finely serrated. All the premaxillary teeth have a rounded cross section at their base, but taper to more compressed sharp points at their tips. In the maxilla, the teeth at the front are large, recurved and blade-like with fine serrations, resembling the teeth of predatory theropod dinosaurs. Further back, the teeth gradually become shorter, stouter and more leaf-shaped with larger denticles. The dentary teeth are similarly heterodont, shifting from sharp and blade-like to leaf-shaped teeth further back. Like in the upper jaw, the first tooth sits very far forward, almost at the very tip of the dentary. All of its teeth are ankylothecodont–their roots fused with the jaw bones–as is typical for azendohsaurids and other archosauromorphs.
Like other azendohsaurids, Puercosuchus has palatal teeth on the roof of its mouth, with a single diagonal row of about 15 small teeth on each palatine and numerous more on the pterygoid bones. The pterygoid teeth are arranged into four fields, a horizontal row of approximately five along the rear edge (T1), two diagonal rows in front (T2 and T3), and a short row (approximately four) on its inner edge (T4). The T2 and T3 fields further divide into two bifurcated ridges each (T2a, T2b, T3a, and T3b) and contain ~22 and ~30 teeth, respectively. The palatal teeth are simpler and more peg-like than the well-developed palatal teeth of Azendohsaurus and Shringasaurus or even Malerisaurus, with only a slight recurve to them and lacking serrations.
Skeleton The vertebral column of Puercosuchus is almost completely known, with vertebrae from every major section of the neck, back, hips and tail represented in the bonebeds. However, the total vertebral count and their relative proportions cannot be known without a single associated skeleton. Like other azendohsaurids, the neck was long with elongated cervical vertebrae that gradually decrease in length down to the base of the neck. The front and rear faces of the cervical centra, the main body of the vertebrae, are vertically offset from each other, a trait found in other azendohsaurids indicative of an elevated neck posture. The neural spines of the anterior cervicals are long and expand in length towards the top to overhang the front of the centrum. The tops of the neural spines are flattened out and broader than their bases, widest toward the front and slightly bifurcated at both ends. The shorter posterior cervicals also have tall neural spines, but they are much less expanded and are only flared out at the top at their midpoints.
The dorsal vertebrae in the back are proportionally more elongate in Puercosuchus compared to Azendohsaurus and are of roughly consistent size, unlike the shortened posterior trunk of Azendohsaurus. Like other azendohsaurids, Puercosuchus had two sacral vertebrae with large sacral ribs that articulated with the ilia of the hips. Notably, the sacral ribs of Puercosuchus project largely horizontally from the vertebrae, compared to the relatively more downward deflected ribs of Azendohsaurus and Shringasaurus. Unlike other azendohsaurids, whose caudal vertebrae decrease in length down the tail, the anterior caudals of Puercosuchus are the shortest (indeed, they are the relatively shortest vertebrae in the whole column) while the middle to posterior caudals are more elongate and slender, giving it a long and tapering tail. Similarly, the neural spines start off tall and subrectangular, projecting dorsally, but become longer and lower with raised rounded and expanded tips down the tail until they are reduced to a low ridge before disappearing entirely. Unusually, Puercosuchus has an extra processes projecting up in front of the neural spines on the posterior caudals, and they are indeed taller than the low neural spines themselves.
The cervical ribs of the neck are long and narrow at first, similar to other azendohsaurids; however, the ribs at the back of the neck are shorter and stouter. Both the cervical and trunk ribs are double headed (dichocephalous) with separate diapophyses and parapophyses on the vertebrae, unlike Malerisaurus robinsonae. However, these fuse into a single facet further back in the trunk and so the last ribs were likely single headed (holocephalous). Puercosuchus also possessed a basket of gastralia, or belly ribs, which may have been relatively well ossified compared to Azendohsaurus. Chevrons are present along the length of the tail, the first of which have only short arms that do not meet below the vertebrae, while those further down the tail form complete haemal arches with long ventral processes that become more pointed and tapered down the length of the tail.
Limbs and girdles