Bottosaurus

Bottosaurus is an extinct genus of crocodile. Specimens have been found from New Jersey, North and South Carolina, and Colorado. It had distinctively thick osteoderms that lacked the pitting of most other crocodylians. The unusual blunt, conical tribodontid crushing teeth are the most common diagnostic material to fossilize and be recovered, although teeth from the posterior portion of the jaw tend to be more laterally compressed like those of other related crocodiles. The teeth had a "wrinkled" enamel surface and prominent annual rings with vertical ridges running down them. A short, massive lower jaw that is nearly circular in cross-section is evident from remains of the type species B. harlani.

The genus is predominantly found from Late Cretaceous strata of Maastrichtian age, such as the Hornerstown Formation, New Jersey Greensands, and Laramie Formation. New material has been found from the Rhems and Williamsburg Formations of the Black Mingo Group of the South Carolina costal plain that dates back to the Danian and Thanetian stages of the Paleocene epoch, respectively, shows that Bottosaurus had survived the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event and lived through much of the early Paleogene period in these localities before finally becoming extinct somewhere around the end of the Paleocene.^[1]

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