Etjosuchus
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| Etjosuchus Temporal range: Middle-Late Triassic, | |
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| Skeletal reconstruction and size comparison of Etjosuchus recurvidens, preserved bones in white. | |
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| Skull diagram | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Clade: | Pseudosuchia |
| Clade: | Loricata |
| Genus: | †Etjosuchus Tolchard et al., 2021 |
| Type species | |
| Etjosuchus recurvidens Tolchard et al., 2021 | |
Etjosuchus is an extinct genus of carnivorous "rauisuchian" (loricatan) archosaur from the Triassic of Namibia. It is known from a single species, Etjosuchus recurvidens, which is based on a partial skeleton from the Ladinian to Carnian-aged Omingonde Formation.
The holotype of Etjosuchus, GSN F382, was discovered in the early 1990s by Thomas Löffler in outcrops of the Omingonde Formation in the bed of the Omingonde River near Mount Etjo. The specimen comprises a partially complete skeleton, preserving most of the vertebral column in articulation, a coracoid, both partial humeri, articulated cervical ribs, disarticulated dorsal ribs, partial gastralia, many articulated and disarticulated osteoderms, and both lateral halves of the skull and jaws, which are split in half in the sagittal plane. The specimen was figured and provisionally identified as Erythrosuchus africanus by Martin Pickford in 1995,[1] and excavated throughout the course of a study of the formation that released in 2002.[2]
It wasn't until 2021 that a detailed anatomical description of the specimen identified it as a new genus of pseudosuchian. The generic name, Etjosuchus, combines a reference to the discovery of the specimen near Mount Etjo with the Greek word suchus (from the Greek name for the Egyptian god Sobek). The specific name, recurvidens, combines "recurved" with the Latin dens ("tooth"), referencing the morphology of the teeth.[3]
