Habitat & Geography

           Phytosaur fossils have been found all over the world.  Concentrations of phytosaur remains have been found in North America, Europe, India, Thailand, Turkey, Madagascar, and a few in Brazil (Kischlat and Lucas, 2003).  Given the type of deposits in the Upper Triassic formations in which they are found and their crocodilian like body structure, paleontologists have concluded that phytosaurs lived in swampy, fluvial environments similar to the modern crocodile (Stocker and Butler, 2013; Ballew, 1989; Senter, 2002).  Smilosuchus remains are mostly concentrated in the Chinle Formation in Arizona and other areas in the American Southwest.  One of the main reasons that Smilosuchus is so common in Petrified Forest National Park is the rapid sedimentation of the environments they lived in.  This rapid sedimentation quickly covered their remains, depleting oxygen which greatly increased the preservation of the bones in the mudstone that dominates much of the sites in the park (Loughney, et. al., 2011).