1" Partially Rooted Crocodylomorph (Araripesuchus) Tooth - Morocco

Araripesuchus, colloquially nicknamed "RatCroc" upon the discovery of specimens in Argentina, was a notosuchian crocodylomorph from the Cretaceous period, about 125 to 66 million years ago. They lived in the warm and wet regions of what is now South America and North Africa, and specimens have even been found in Madagascar. The name Araripesuchus, meaning "Araripe's Crocodile", refers to the Araripe basin of Brazil, where the first specimens were collected in 1959. The nickname "RatCroc" refers to the small size, terrestrial adaptation, and large faux-canine teeth placed towards the front of the skull, similar to a rat's incisors. Measuring just under 6 feet (2 meters) at the largest, Araripesuchus was likely a smaller predator in its native ecologies.

The Kem Kem Group is famous for yielding a diverse Late Cretaceous vertebrate assemblage, including fish, reptiles, and dinosaurs such as Spinosaurus. These fossils are found in a thin bed that outcrops around the edge of a large plateau near Taouz, Morocco. Local miners collect these fossils by digging narrow tunnels by hand into this plateau, following the layer.

A paper on this assemblage can be found at: Vertebrate assemblages from the early Late Cretaceous of southeastern Morocco: An overview