Notochampsa

Notochampsa is an extinct genus of protosuchian crocodyliform. Fossils have been found from the lower Clarens Formation of the Karoo Supergroup in South Africa, dating back to the Pliensbachian stage of the Early Jurassic. Notochampsa comes from a period of relative fossil scarcity, and is the youngest known occurrence of a crocodylomorph from the Karoo Basin of South Africa.

Taxonomy

The genus was named in a paper published in 1904 by Robert Broom. The type species was named N. istedana, and a second species, named N. longipes, was also described. Later in 1924, N. longipes was given its own genus, Erythrochampsa. In that paper, Sidney Haughton created the family Notochampsidae for Notochampsa. Notochampsa was later used to include other genera of protosuchians such as Dyoplax, Pedeticosaurus, Platyognathus, and Protosuchus, and later Microchampsa and Orthosuchus. Notochampsa had also once been assigned to the suborder Sphenosuchia. A revision in 2021 found it valid taxon, and phylogenetic analysis recovered it as sister to Orthosuchus, in a monophyletic Notochampsidae. The cladogram below is from that study.