from the latest Triassic of England was described in 2022 as a crown-clade squamate, of importance as the oldest such modern-type lizard, extending their temporal range downward by 35 Myr. This view was challenged in 2023, and was reinterpreted as an archosauromorph. These decisions matter because the original view has an impact on our understanding of the early stages of squamate evolution; the revised view removes the species from such a role. The revisers emphasized the need to make careful observations of the fossils and to interpret the morphological data appropriately in terms of relationships; here, we find many errors of observation and interpretation in the work of the revisers, and we correct these with reference to the fossils, both in the rock and in the computed tomography scans we had made for the original description. We show that when the observational errors are corrected and the taxa recoded, every phylogenetic analysis confirms our original conclusion that is not an archosauromorph, but a lepidosauromorph, a lepidosaur, a pan-squamate and a crown squamate.
Download full-text PDF |
Source |
---|---|
http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC11597406 | PMC |
http://dx.doi.org/10.1098/rsos.231874 | DOI Listing |
PeerJ
December 2024
State Key Laboratory of Biogeology and Environmental Geology, School of Earth Sciences, China University of Geosciences, Wuhan, Hubei, China.
Actinopterygians (ray-finned fishes) successfully passed through the Permian-Triassic Mass Extinction (PTME) and flourished in the Triassic with diverse feeding specializations and occupation of various trophic levels. , one of the largest actinopterygian fish of the Triassic, was characterized by a strong, blunt rostrum and three rows of sharp cutting-edged teeth, making them the top predators in the Early Mesozoic oceanic ecosystem. These fishes rapidly radiated and diversified globally during the Early and Middle Triassic, but the fossil record is rare for the Neo-Tethys in the Late Triassic.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Anat
December 2024
Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, South Africa.
During the Late Permian, saber-toothed gorgonopsian therapsids were the dominant terrestrial predators, playing crucial roles as apex predators alongside therocephalian therapsids within Permian terrestrial ecosystems. The entire gorgonopsian clade went extinct during the Permo-Triassic mass extinction, leaving other therapsids to continue into the Triassic. Gorgonopsians have not been well studied, particularly in terms of their growth patterns, with only a few genera having undergone osteohistological analysis.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFR Soc Open Sci
December 2024
SNSB, Bayerische Staatssammlung für Paläontologie und Geologie, Richard-Wagner-Straße 10, 80333 Munich, Germany.
As the first group of tetrapods to achieve powered flight, pterosaurs first appeared in the Late Triassic. They proliferated globally, and by the Late Jurassic through the Cretaceous, the majority of these taxa belonged to the clade Monofenestrata (which includes the well-known Pterodactyloidea as its major subclade), typified by their single undivided fenestra anterior to the orbit. Here, a new taxon gen.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFJ Anat
December 2024
Structure and Motion Laboratory, Department of Comparative Biomedical Sciences, Royal Veterinary College, North Mymms, Hatfield, UK.
Lagosuchus talampayensis is a small-bodied (~0.5 m long) Late Triassic dinosauriform archosaur from Argentina. Lagosuchus long has been a pivotal taxon for reconstructing the evolution of form and function on the dinosaur lineage.
View Article and Find Full Text PDFEnter search terms and have AI summaries delivered each week - change queries or unsubscribe any time!