Trematochampsa taqueti as a nomen dubium and the crocodyliform diversity of the Upper Cretaceous In Beceten Formation of Niger
Bibliographic record
Abstract
Trematochampsa taqueti was described over 40 years ago based on the fragmentary material from the Coniacian–Santonian aged In Beceten Formation of Niger. Trematochampsa taqueti consists of a holotype lacrimal and many referred cranial and postcranial elements. Since, no new fossils for this important taxon have been recovered. In spite of its fragmentary state, T. taqueti has played an important role in crocodyliform phylogenetics as the founding taxon for Trematochampsidae, a clade with which many Gondwanan crocodyliforms have been allied. We present a revision of T. taqueti and all material assigned to it. The holotype, a partial right lacrimal, is re-examined and compared to the current understanding of Crocodyliformes diversity. This comparison recovers no autapormophies for the holotype and we suggest T. taqueti be considered a nomen dubium. We further recommend abandoning the taxon Trematochampsidae. The remaining material originally attributed to T. taqueti is divided into several distinct crocodyliform morphotypes. We find affinities of several bones with peirosaurids, Araripesuchus, Anatosuchus minor, derived notosuchians and neosuchians. The collection originally assigned to T. taqueti instead represents the presence of a hitherto unappreciated diversity of crocodyliforms in the In Beceten Formation.
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How this classification was reachedexpand
Full frame machine prediction
Teacher imitationNot calibrated prevalence, not ground truth. Human validation pending. The Gemma side is a direct model label for every work in the frame, read from the title-only record. The Codex side is a classifier learned from the 10,348 direct Codex labels and calibrated to design-weighted sample rates; fields without enough sample support carry no Codex call. Candidate is the union of the two sides; consensus is their intersection. These outputs are machine_predicted_unvalidated and are not human labels.
Distilled classifier scores by category (both heads)
| Category | Codex | Gemma |
|---|---|---|
| Metaresearch | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Meta-epidemiology (narrow) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Meta-epidemiology (broad) | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Bibliometrics | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Science and technology studies | 0.001 | 0.001 |
| Scholarly communication | 0.001 | 0.000 |
| Open science | 0.000 | 0.001 |
| Research integrity | 0.000 | 0.000 |
| Insufficient payload (model declined to judge) | 0.002 | 0.000 |
Machine scores (provisional)
The two teacher heads of the student model, read on this work. A score orders the frame for review; it never asserts a category, and the validation status ships verbatim with every row.
Baseline scores from an immature model (maturity gate not passed, 7 training rounds). Scores rank; they never assert a category.
score_only:v0-immature-baseline · verbatim from the scoring run: score_only means the number may rank works, and no category label ships from itClassification
machine, unvalidatedMachine predicted; a candidate call from one source (direct Gemma or distilled Codex), not a consensus.
How this classification was reached, model by model and score by score, is at the end of the page under "How this classification was reached".