Goniopholis ’ phuwiangensis Buffetaut & Ingavat, 1983

Pochat-Cottilloux, Yohan, Lauprasert, Komsorn, Chanthasit, Phornphen, Manitkoon, Sita, Adrien, Jérôme, Lachambre, Joël, Amiot, Romain & Martin, Jeremy E., 2024, New Cretaceous neosuchians (Crocodylomorpha) from Thailand bridge the evolutionary history of atoposaurids and paralligatorids, Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society 202, pp. 1-27 : 18

The status of ‘ Goniopholis ’ phuwiangensis Buffetaut & Ingavat, 1983

‘ Goniopholis ’ phuwiangensis Buffetaut & Ingavat, 1983 consists of an incomplete dentary ( Fig. 17 ) and is considered by some as belonging to the genus Sunosuchus Young, 1948 or could be conspecific with Siamosuchus ( Lauprasert 2006, Lauprasert et al. 2007, de Andrade et al. 2011, Puértolas-Pascual et al. 2015). This taxon is diagnosed on a fragment of dentary, by the following characters: dentary symphysis reaching the level of the sixth alveoli (i.e. five alveoli completely included); no marked angulation of the lower tooth row in its anterior part; no strong outward projection of the lateral rims of the third and fourth dentary alveoli; and an alveolar edge strongly undulated in lateral view ( Fig. 17 ). Although the specimen diagnosing ‘ Goniopholis ’ phuwiangensis is larger than the new specimens from Phu Sung, all those characters are also shared by SM-2021-1-97/101 (Supplementary Model S2). However, we argue that those characters are also identified in other neosuchians: for example, in Goniopholis baryglyphaeus Schwarz, 2003 , the dentary referred to Goniopholididae (AR-1-3423) by Buscalioni et al. (2013), or Leidyosuchus sp. ( Farke et al. 2014). As such, they are not truly diagnostic, and we thus consider ‘ Goniopholis ’ phuwiangensis as a nomen dubium. The holotype of ‘ Goniopholis ’ phuwiangensis could instead be referred to Varanosuchus sakonnakhonensis , but given its incompleteness, we would rather wait for further material to assess its belonging.

Figures

Figure 17. ‘Goniopholis’ phuwiangensis (DMR THF 2558 1 00177) in dorsal (A), ventral (B), anterior (C), medial (D), and lateral (E) views. Numbers indicate dentary alveoli numbers. Scale bars: 1 cm.