Kuttanacaiman

Habitat

Kuttanacaiman lived in Amazonia at a time before the Amazon River Basin was established; in its place was a massive wetland, called the Pebas Mega-Wetland System, that covered an approximate area of over 1,000,000 square kilometres (390,000 sq mi) in a drainage basin east of the still forming Andes, which at the time were experiencing rapid uplift in certain parts. Kuttanacaiman coexisted with six other crocodylian species, including two other caiman species with crushing dentitions: Gnatusuchus pebasensis and Caiman wannlangstoni. Shells belonging to the bivalve genus Pachydon form thick fossil beds in the Pebas Formation and may have been a food source for Kuttanacaiman and these other caimans in swamps and marshes.

Taxonomy

A phylogenetic analysis published in 2015 indicates that Kuttanacaiman is one of the most basal members of the clade Caimaninae. Other basal caimanines such as Gnatusuchus and Globidentosuchus also possess crushing teeth, suggesting that this type of dentition was ancestral for the clade. Later caimanines, including most living species in the genus Caiman, have more generalized dentitions, but some species such as C. wannlangstoni and C. latirostris seem to have re-evolved crushing dentitions. Below is a cladogram showing this evolutionary pattern, with crushing-dentition caimanine species in bold: