Comahuesuchidae is a

family Family (from ) is a Social group, group of people related either by consanguinity (by recognized birth) or Affinity (law), affinity (by marriage or other relationship). It forms the basis for social order. Ideally, families offer predictabili ...

notosuchia Notosuchia is a clade of primarily Gondwanan mesoeucrocodylian Crocodylomorpha, crocodylomorphs that lived during the Jurassic and Cretaceous. Some phylogeny, phylogenies recover Sebecosuchia as a clade within Notosuchia, others as a sister group ...

crocodyliform Crocodyliformes is a clade of Crurotarsi, crurotarsan archosaurs, the group often traditionally referred to as "crocodilians". They are the first members of Crocodylomorpha to possess many of the features that define later relatives. They are the ...

s. Constructed in 1991, it includes the

genera Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family as used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In binomial nomenclature, the genus name forms the first part of the binomial s ...

'' Comahuesuchus'' and ''

Anatosuchus ''Anatosuchus'' ("duck crocodile", the name from the Latin ''anas'' ("duck") and the Greek ''souchos'' ("crocodile"), for the broad, duck-like snout) is an extinct genus of notosuchian crocodyliforms discovered in Gadoufaoua, Niger, and described ...

''. Among the characteristics that are unique to this family is an external naris that is inset into the tip of the snout. There is also a

diastema A diastema (: diastemata, from Greek , 'space') is a space or gap between two teeth. Many species of mammals have diastemata as a normal feature, most commonly between the incisors and molars. More colloquially, the condition may be referred to ...

, or gap between the teeth, at the tip of the upper and lower jaws. Both ''Anatosuchus'' and ''Comahuesuchus'' have

maxilla In vertebrates, the maxilla (: maxillae ) is the upper fixed (not fixed in Neopterygii) bone of the jaw formed from the fusion of two maxillary bones. In humans, the upper jaw includes the hard palate in the front of the mouth. The two maxil ...

ry tooth rows in the upper jaw that extend out and over the

dentary In jawed vertebrates, the mandible (from the Latin ''mandibula'', 'for chewing'), lower jaw, or jawbone is a bone that makes up the lowerand typically more mobilecomponent of the mouth (the upper jaw being known as the maxilla). The jawbone ...

tooth rows of the lower jaw. Several recent

phylogenetic In biology, phylogenetics () is the study of the evolutionary history of life using observable characteristics of organisms (or genes), which is known as phylogenetic inference. It infers the relationship among organisms based on empirical dat ...

analyses of notosuchians have placed ''Anatosuchus'' outside of Notosuchia altogether, and therefore outside Comahuesuchidae. If this is true, ''Comahuesuchus'' would be the only member of Comahuesuchidae.

References

Notosuchia Late Cretaceous crocodylomorphs Cretaceous first appearances Late Cretaceous extinctions Pseudosuchian families {{paleo-archosaur-stub