Stratodontidae, Maastrichtien du Niger, partie 2

Marc Michaut (1)

1 IPEST - Institut préparatoire aux études scientifiques et techniques

Stratodontidae are known for more than a century as sporadic bones, always found in maastrichtian levels, in United States, in Morocco and in Congo. Since 1998, we got a very important set of material, essentially from the site of In Daman, in Aulimadan (Iullemmeden) basin. This allowed us to describe with a pretty precision Stratodus indamanensis, a big species of the family. We found also Ministratodus kehehensis, a smaller species. Two species, Stratodus apicalis and Stratodus oxypogon, were formerly defined by Cope. So we could draw the first cladogram for Stratodontidae. This family had been defined by Cope but was later abandoned because of lack of new discoveries. We restore Stratodontidae family and separate it from Dercetidae to which the two ancient Stratodus had been reported by some authors. The very abundant material from nigerian site of In Daman allowed us to conduct meticulous statistic studies. Such a work is absolutely necessary in order to reconstruct Stratodus indamanensis of which not any entire skeleton is known; furthermore, statistics allowed us to reconstruct a snapshot of the animal's demography, at the precise instant of a bone bed deposit. So we got an interesting sight of the ecology of Stratodus indamanensis during an interval of some years.

Mots clés: Aulimadan; Cretaceous; Dercetidae; In daman; Iullemmeden; Kehehe; Maastrichtian; Mentess; Ministratodus; Ministratodus kehehensis; Niger; Stratodontidae; Stratodus; Stratodus apicalis; Stratodus indamanensis; upper Cretaceous

Domaines: Paléontologie

Marc Michaut. Stratodontidae, Maastrichtien du Niger, partie 2. 2012. ⟨hal-00734137⟩