Postosuchus is a rauisuchid reptile from the Late Triassic of the United States of America. It was named in 1985 by Sankar Chatterjee. It was one of the biggest predatory reptiles to roam Triassic North America; as well as this, it was very unique, due to its posture.
Physiology[]
Postosuchus was a reptile with a bulky body, long hindlegs, moderately-sized arms, a long tail, and a big head with large jaws. Its body would have been covered in scaly skin, with crocodile-like scutes running down its back.
Diet[]
Postosuchus was a predator, preying on large anomodonts, cynodonts, small crocodylomorphs, and small dinosaurs. Its teeth had knife-like serrations from back to back, and were designed for crushing bone.
Ecology[]
Being the terrestrial apex predator of the Triassic North American deserts, Postosuchus would have been able to eat anything that lived alongside it; the only animals it had to be careful around were other Postosuchus, as well as the large phytosaur Smilosuchus. One of its prey items, the large aetosaur Desmatosuchus, would have traveled in large herds; however, this behavior would have been futile when trying to defend against predators, as one fossil site in the Southern United States would tell us that Postosuchus also hunted in groups. Like its somewhat close relative, Batrachotomus, Postosuchus was believed to be quadrupedal; however, recent skeletal analyses have showed that its forelimbs were too short for it to properly walk in a quadrupedal posture, and that its vertebra had a similar articulation to those of large theropod dinosaurs such as Tyrannosaurus and Allosaurus. Due to this, people were able to confirm that it walked bipedally.
In popular culture[]
Postosuchus was featured in the first episode of the 1999 documentary Walking with Dinosaurs, where it was oversized to 6 meters long and depicted as walking with a quadrupedal gait. As well as this, despite the narrator mentioning it to be the biggest, most fearsome land predator of the Triassic, it walked at an extremely slow pace, roared every so often, and became paralyzed from a paltry wound caused by a Placerias tusk.