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Vertebrates from Late Triassic Thecodontosaurus-bearing rocks in England



From: Ben Creisler
bcreisler@gmail.com

A new online paper:

Davide Foffa, David I. Whiteside, Pedro A. Viegas & Michael J. Benton (2014)
Vertebrates from the Late Triassic Thecodontosaurus-bearing rocks of
Durdham Down, Clifton (Bristol, UK).
Proceedings of the Geologists' Association (advance online publication)
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.pgeola.2014.02.002
http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S001678781400008X

Since the discovery of the basal sauropodomorph dinosaur
Thecodontosaurus in the 1830s, the associated fauna from the Triassic
fissures at Durdham Down (Bristol, UK) has not been investigated,
largely because the quarries are built over. Other fissure sites
around the Bristol Channel show that dinosaurs represented a minor
part of the fauna of the Late Triassic archipelago. Here we present
data on microvertebrates from the original Durdham Down fissure rocks,
which considerably expand the taxonomic diversity of the island fauna,
revealing that it was dominated by the sphenodontian Diphydontosaurus,
and that archosauromorphs, including sphenosuchian crocodylomorphs,
coelophysoid theropods, and the basal sauropodomorph Thecodontosaurus,
were diverse. Importantly, a few fish teeth provide new information
about the debated age of the fissure deposit, which is identified as
lower Rhaetian. Thecodontosaurus had been assigned an age range over
20-25 Myr of the Late Triassic, so this narrower age determination
(209.5-204 Myr) is important for studies of early dinosaurian
evolution.