Re: [dinosaur] Ascendonanus, new arboreal varanopid synapsid from Permian of Germany; Microvaranops from South Africa

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

I've seen the five *Ascendonanus* specimens twice (2012 and 2014, at 
conference-related excursions). At the time, they were all considered 
indeterminate amniotes because the skulls are so hard to interpret from the 
outside; I'm very happy to see that has changed!

So, now we finally know that lizard-style scales are not limited to sauropsids, 
but plesiomorphic for amniotes; some "mammal-like reptiles" really looked like 
"reptiles" after all.

Now I'm optimistic that the two aÃstopods from the same forest floor (which I 
saw at the same occasions) will be ÂCT-scanned and published, too! They were 
very briefly mentioned (erroneously as "microsaurs"), with a useless photo as 
fig. 12E, in the publication cited below; a photo of an *Ascendonanus* specimen 
is also included there as fig. 12F.

Ronny RÃÃler, Thorid Zierold, Zhuo Feng, Ralph Kretzschmar, Mathias Merbitz, 
Volker Annacker, JÃrg W. Schneider (2012): A snapshot of an Early Permian 
ecosystem preserved by explosive voclanism: new results from the Chemnitz 
petrified forest, Germany. Palaios 27:814â834. DOI: 10.2110/palo.2011.p11-112r

> > Further systematic results suggest a varanodontine position for 
> > Mycterosaurus

That's a strange thing to say from the nomenclatorial point of view, because 
Varanopidae was first divided into Varanodontinae and Mycterosaurinae... 
Besides, Varanodontinae contains *Varanops* (as the sister-group of 
*Varanodon*) and must therefore be called Varanopinae, as it has been in at 
least one recent publication.

> The headline read Â<<RÃtsel um Saurierfund gelÃst >> [Riddle Over Saurian 
> Find Solved].

"Saurier" doesn't really translate. It's a half-popular term that has never 
corresponded to anything in zoology as far as I know. It roughly means "big 
Mesozoic or Permian tetrapod"; Triassic temnospondyls (like capito_saurs_ or 
tremato_saurs_) have occasionally been included, lizards never to the best of 
my knowledge, though of course it might ultimately come from a mid-19th-century 
concept of Sauria like Owen's, who included the crocodiles and famously the 
dinosaurs.