RE: Late Triassic prosauropods from Madagascar and Texas

[Tim Williams <twilliams_alpha@hotmail.com>]

Nick Gardner wrote:

> Also, has there been any further work on the Madagascaran "prosauropods"?

They don't appear to be prosauropods, or even dinosaurs.  There may be 
something more recent than this, but this is what Goswami et al. (2005) had 
to say:

"Recently, terrestrial sediments of ?Isalo II? (of the Isalo Group) from the 
southern Morondava Basin of Madagascar (Besairie, 1936) have yielded a 
diverse mid-late Triassic fauna, including the island's first traversodontid 
cynodonts (Flynn et al., 1999, 2000) and potentially the oldest known 
prosauropod (Flynn et al., 1999).  The latter was tentatively identified 
based on synapomorphies of the dentary and maxillae shared with Prosauropoda 
(Flynn et al., 1999), although preparation of additional cranial and 
postcranial material likely pertaining to this taxon suggests that it may 
represent a more basal archosaur (thus, to reflect this uncertainty, we 
conservatively refer to this archosaur taxon as ?prosauropod? in quotation 
marks throughout this paper)."


References

Goswami, A., Flynn, J.J., Ranivoharimanana, L., and Wyss, A.R. (2005)  
Dental microwear in Triassic amniotes: implications for paleoecology and 
masticatory mechanics.  Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 25: 320?329.

Flynn J. J., Parrish, J.M., Rakotosamimanana, B., Simpson, W.F., Whatley, 
R.L., and Wyss, A.R. (1999). A Triassic fauna from Madagascar, including 
early dinosaurs. Science. 286: 763?765.

Cheers

Tim



> Thanks
>
> Nick Gardner

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