Yesterday a new species of alligatoroid was published, the small yet broad snouted Eurycephalosuchus ("broad-headed crocodile"). I love this little guy already. Discovered in southern China, this animal lived sometime during the Late Cretaceous, likely the early Maastrichtian. It was a member of the Orientalosuchina, a group of early alligator relatives that lived during the Cretaceous and Paleogene in East Asia, primarily China but also Vietnam. Although there is some crushing going on with this skull, its relatively minor. The authors suspect that uncrushing the skull would only add 5mm to its length, so this bizarre snub-nosed appearance is pretty much what this animal would look in life. Whats also fun is that the same excavation yielded a second croc, an indetermined brevirostrine (which basically means it could be a crocodile-relative or an alligator-relative) of much larger size. This begs the question, how big is that? We don't get precise estimates, but its said that the "big" one is similar in size to a Chinese Alligator (which get to about 2 meters) and its also said that Eurycephalosuchus is "the smallest orientalosuchine based on skull length". So that all basically says its pretty damn small. Well I will try to put together an uncrushed recon of the skull and a proper full scale size comparison eventually, but until then. Have this:
