Oulad Abdoun Basin, in the vicinity of Khouribga, Morocco.[1]
Paleobiology
Ocepesuchus likely had a piscivorous diet based on its narrow snout, but it wasn't suited for eating large
pycnodonts like Phacodus, with the preserved portion of its skull measuring only about 38 cm (15 in) long.[2] The type specimen is interpreted as either a small-sized adult or a subadult, and it may have spent its time in freshwater during its juvenile stages, similar to modern marine crocodiles; if this were indeed the case, some of the juveniles may have been protected to an extent from the Cretaceous–Paleogene extinction event.[1]
Classification
Jouve and colleagues performed a
phylogenetic study by Iijima et al. recovered Ocepesuchus within Gavialinae, deeply nested within Gavialoidea, as shown in the cladogram below:[3]
