Gavialinae is asubfamily of largesemiaquaticcrocodilian reptiles, resemblingcrocodiles, but with much thinner snouts. Gavialinae is one of the two major subfamilies within thefamilyGavialidae - the other being the subfamilyTomistominae, which contains thefalse gharial and extinct relatives.
Gavialinae was first proposed byNopcsa in 1923, and wascladistically defined by Brochu in 2003 asGavialis gangeticus (thegharial) and all crocodylians more closely related to it than toTomistoma schlegelii (thefalse gharial).[2] This is astem-based definition for gavialinae, and means that it includes morebasalextinct gavialine ancestors that are more closely related to the gharial than to the false gharial.
The false gharial was once thought to be only distantly related to the gharial despite its similar appearance. The false gharial and othertomistomines were traditionally classified within thesuperfamilyCrocodyloidea as close relatives ofcrocodiles, based solely onmorphological evidence.[3] However, recent molecular studies usingDNA sequencing have found that they are in fact more closely related to each other than any otherextant (living) crocodilian.[3][4][5][6][7]
The placement of extinct gavialids between Gavialinae and Tomistominae is unresolved.
The belowcladogram is from the 2022 Iijimaet al. study:[8]
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Extinctcrocodilians | |||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||||
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