Caiman (genus)

Caimans
Yacare caiman, Caiman yacare
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Superorder: Crocodylomorpha
Order: Crocodilia
Family: Alligatoridae
Clade: Jacarea
Genus: Caiman
Type species
Caiman fissipes
Spix, 1825
Synonyms
  • Jacaretinga Spix, 1825
  • Champsa Wagler, 1830
  • Jacare Gray, 1844

Caimans are alligatorid crocodylians within the subfamily Caimaninae. Caimans inhabit Central and South America. They are relatively small crocodilians, with most species reaching lengths of only a few meters, although one species, the black caiman, can exceed 4 m (13 ft) in length.[1]

Taxonomy

References

  1. ↑ Brochu, C. A. (1999). "Phylogenetics, Taxonomy, and Historical Biogeography of Alligatoroidea". Society of Vertebrate Paleontology Memoir 6: 9–100. doi:10.2307/3889340. JSTOR 3889340.
  2. ↑ Rodolfo Salas-Gismondi, John J. Flynn, Patrice Baby, Julia V. Tejada-Lara, Frank P. Wesselingh and Pierre-Olivier Antoine (2015). "A Miocene hyperdiverse crocodylian community reveals peculiar trophic dynamics in proto-Amazonian mega-wetlands". Proceedings of the Royal Society B: Biological Sciences 282 (1804): 20142490. doi:10.1098/rspb.2014.2490.
  3. ↑ Daniel Costa Fortiera y Ascanio Daniel Rincón (2012). Pleistocene crocodylians from Venezuela, and the description of a new species of Caiman. Quaternary International. In press, DOI:dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.quaint.2012.03.018.