The Late Campanian Denazinosuchus kirtlandicus from the Kirtland Formation of San Juan Basin, New Mexico was found by the famous fossil collector Charles Hazelius Sternberg and described as Goniopholis kirtlandicus by Carl Wiman in 1932. It was later designated as the type of a new genus Denazinosuchus, but still putatively assigned to the family Goniopholididae. The PMU.R230 specimen consists of the right side of a skull, from the posterior end of the external naris to the anterior end of the supratemporal fenestra, as well as an isolated bone fragment identified as the right squamosal. In this work, the specimen has been reviewed with the aid of CT-imaging in order to investigate cranial suture patterns and the internal structures of the skull. Denazinosuchus kirtlandicus is also included in phylogenetic analyses using both parsimony and Bayesian methodologies in order to investigate its relationships within Goniopholididae. Two different datasets were used in the analyses; one focusing on neosuchians and one targeting goniopholidids. Denazinosuchus kirtlandicus is one of four crocodylian taxa that have been reported from the Kirtland and the underlying Fruitland formations; although, only definite remains of Brachychampsa montana has been found in the same non-marine strata as D. kirtlandicus. Earlier works have shown that co-occurring crocodylians tend to differ in their snout morphology as a result of ecological partitioning. Following this premise, the San Juan Basin crocodylians were also included in a morphometric analysis using relative warps to test for feeding niche specialization. Both the phylogenetic analyses and shared morphological features indicate that D. kirtlandicus is indeed a derived goniopholidid, thereby extending the goniopholid lineage by approximately 40 million years to the Late Campanian. Furthemore, the morphometric analysis suggests that D. kirtlandicus acquired a generalist lifestyle, a niche otherwise occupied by basal eusuchians. Instead, the basal eusuchian B. montana appears to have been durophagous, perhaps feeding on turtles.
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