Re: Sweet cynodont Thursday

[David Marjanovic <david.marjanovic@gmx.at>]

> <<Except that Botha et al. don't mention why they put *Dvinia* deep into 
> the Late Permian.>>
>
> I'd imagine 'deep' here means 'shallow' in my complex stratigraphic 
> vocabulary; 'late', 'uppermost', 'near the top' of the Permian.

Er, yes. "Deep into the interior"... :-]

> Page 481 also has its attractions.  There's a table listing all the 
> identified terrestrial vertebrates from 16 similarly aged localities in 
> the immediate area.  My scribbled, unchecked numbers are downstairs so the 
> following corpse count is slightly rough.  Over 120 corpses or bits of 
> corpses have been identified from this /Tropidostoma/ Assemblage Zone 
> assemblage.  72% of them were contributed by one dicynodont species, 
> /Diictodon galeops/.  A couple of the localities might be accused of bias. 
> One provided 29 corpses with 22 of that species.  Another yield 15 of that 
> species and a bit of some other dicynodont.  Even so, I'm impressed with 
> this critter.  It's been found in 14 of those 16 localities.  The next 
> most numerous taxon comprises of 8 specimens of /Tropidomstoma/, with 5 of 
> them from a single source.

Yes, the Karroo Permian is incredibly rich. Outside of maybe the Jehol Group 
(which hasn't been researched for so long and is probably a bit less easy to 
access), I'm not aware of a Mesozoic terrestrial deposit that is comparable, 
except for monospecific bonebeds... does Ghost Ranch count? Should the 
Morrison Fm count (the biggest dicynodonts in the *Tropidostoma* zone should 
have overlapped the smallest Morrison dinosaurs in size, AFAIK)?