Osteology of Crocodylus palaeindicus from the late Miocene–Pleistocene of South Asia and the phylogenetic relationships of crocodyloids

Fossil crocodylian remains have been documented from India and other parts of South Asia since the mid-19th century, but specimens attributed to several extinct and extant species of Crocodylus have largely been neglected in modern taxonomic treatments. Here, we present a detailed anatomical description of the extinct species Crocodylus palaeindicus, which we restrict to the Late Miocene to early Middle Pleistocene of India. Using an autapomorphy-based approach to species-level identification, we regard Crocodylus sivalensis as a junior synonym of C. palaeindicus, and provide taxonomic reidentifications of all specimens previously referred to these two species. We present a new diagnosis for C. palaeindicus that facilitates its distinction from the extant mugger crocodile, C. palustris, which does not unequivocally appear in the fossil record prior to the Pleistocene. The lack of clear spatiotemporal overlap, coupled with the otherwise lengthy ghost lineage implied by their sister taxon..., The morphological data matrix was built based on the literature and personal observations. These data were then analysed under the TNT (v. 1.6) software for phylogenetic inferences with several methods of inference., , # Osteology of Crocodylus palaeindicus from the late Miocene–Pleistocene of South Asia and the phylogenetic relationships of crocodyloids

[https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.83bk3j9z8](https://doi.org/10.5061/dryad.83bk3j9z8)

## Description of the data and file structure

The data are separated into 4 files :
\- nexus_matrix.nex, which is the morphological data matrix used in the analyses.
\- tnt_matrix.tnt which is the same matrix but in a format suitable for running the analyses under the TNT software.
\- tree_analysis_1.nex which is the output tree of analysis 1.
\- tree_analysis_2.nex which is the output tree of analysis 2.

April Version changes: Update of the nexus file so that it is compatible with Mesquite Software.
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