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Helveticosaurus
''Helveticosaurus'' is an extinct genus of diapsid marine reptile known from the Middle Triassic (Anisian-Ladinian boundary) of southern Switzerland. It contains a single species, ''Helveticosaurus zollingeri'', known from the nearly complete holotype T 4352 collected at Cava Tre Fontane of Monte San Giorgio, an area well known for its rich record of marine life during the Middle Triassic. Description and paleobiology ''Helveticosaurus'' is known from a nearly complete holotype which includes the premaxilla, maxilla, prefrontal, postfrontal, postorbital, squamosal, dentary and a postcranial skeleton. Several disarticulated elements are also known including teeth, portions of the snout and poscranial elements. ''Helveticosaurus'' is estimated to be about long from snout to tail. It possessed many features that were adaptations to a marine lifestyle in the shallow-sea environment that existed in Europe at the time when much of the continent was part of the Tethys Ocean. ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helveticosaurus Zollingeri 1
''Helveticosaurus'' is an extinct genus of diapsid marine reptile known from the Middle Triassic (Anisian-Ladinian boundary) of southern Switzerland. It contains a type species, single species, ''Helveticosaurus zollingeri'', known from the nearly complete holotype T 4352 collected at Cava Tre Fontane of Monte San Giorgio, an area well known for its rich record of marine life during the Middle Triassic. Description and paleobiology ''Helveticosaurus'' is known from a nearly complete holotype which includes the premaxilla, maxilla, prefrontal, postfrontal, postorbital, squamosal, dentary and a postcranial skeleton. Several disarticulated elements are also known including teeth, portions of the snout and poscranial elements. ''Helveticosaurus'' is estimated to be about long from snout to tail. It possessed many features that were adaptations to a marine lifestyle in the shallow-sea environment that existed in Europe at the time when much of the continent was part of the Tet ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helveticosaurus Naish
''Helveticosaurus'' is an extinct genus of diapsid marine reptile known from the Middle Triassic (Anisian-Ladinian boundary) of southern Switzerland. It contains a single species, ''Helveticosaurus zollingeri'', known from the nearly complete holotype T 4352 collected at Cava Tre Fontane of Monte San Giorgio, an area well known for its rich record of marine life during the Middle Triassic. Description and paleobiology ''Helveticosaurus'' is known from a nearly complete holotype which includes the premaxilla, maxilla, prefrontal, postfrontal, postorbital, squamosal, dentary and a postcranial skeleton. Several disarticulated elements are also known including teeth, portions of the snout and poscranial elements. ''Helveticosaurus'' is estimated to be about long from snout to tail. It possessed many features that were adaptations to a marine lifestyle in the shallow-sea environment that existed in Europe at the time when much of the continent was part of the Tethys Ocean. Th ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Helveticosauridae
Helveticosauridae is an extinct family of basal marine reptiles known from the Middle Triassic (Anisian-Ladinian boundary) of southern Switzerland and northern Italy. The type species of the family is '' Helveticosaurus zollingeri'', named by Bernhard Peyer in 1955 based on a single nearly complete specimen T 4352 collected at Cava Tre Fontane from the Anisian-Ladinian boundary of Monte San Giorgio, Switzerland. Peyer (1955) considered the species to be a very distinctive member of the order Placodontia, and thus erected Helveticosauridae as well as the superfamily Helveticosauroidea to contain it within Placodontia. Nosotti and Rieppel (2003) described ''Eusaurosphargis'' from the equivalent beds at Cava di Besano of the Besano Formation (Anisian-Ladinian boundary) of Italy. Their phylogenetic analysis recovered it as the sister taxon of ''Helveticosaurus'', and thus it was assigned to Helveticosauridae. Based on the description in the literature available for ''Saurosphar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Eusaurosphargis
''Eusaurosphargis'' is an extinct genus of a diapsid reptile, known from the Middle Triassic (Anisian and Ladinian age) Besano Formation of northern Italy and Prosanto Formation of south-eastern Switzerland. It contains a single species, ''Eusaurosphargis dalsassoi''. It was a small reptile, measuring long. Discovery The holotype of ''Eusaurosphargis dalsassoi'' (BES SC 390) is a partial skeleton of a single individual found disarticulated but in close association. BES SC 390 was collected from an oil shale at Cava di Besano of the Besano Formation (Grenzbitumenzone). These lagoonal beds are equivalent to those at Monte San Giorgio, dating to the Anisian-Ladinian boundary, probably to the latest Anisian at this location, of the early Middle Triassic, about 243 million years ago. Nicole Klein and Oliver J. Sichelschmidt (2014) described disarticulated remains they referred to ''Eusaurosphargis sp''. These remains were collected from the Dutch Winterswijk Quar ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Saurosphargis
''Saurosphargis'' is an extinct genus of a basal marine reptile, saurosphargid, known from the Middle Triassic (Anisian age) of southwestern Poland and eastern Netherlands. It contains a single species, ''Saurosphargis volzi''. Discovery ''Saurosphargis'' is known solely from the unnumbered holotype that was housed at the Breslaw Museum, a partial postcranial skeleton that included a section of 12 incomplete back vertebrae with ribs. The specimen collected at Gogolin, Gorny Slask of Upper Silesia, Poland, from the Chorzower Schichten horizon of the Lower Muschelkalk, dating to the early Anisian stage of the early Middle Triassic, about 246 million years ago. Rieppel (1995) described an isolated vertebra MGU Wr. 3873s housed at Institute of Geological Sciences, University of Wroclaw, that is possibly referable to ''Saurosphargis'', collected from the same general location. The holotype was destroyed during World War II, and as a result many authors considered ''S ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Placodontia
Placodonts (" Tablet teeth") are an extinct order of marine reptiles that lived during the Triassic period, becoming extinct at the end of the period. They were part of Sauropterygia, the group that includes plesiosaurs. Placodonts were generally between in length, with some of the largest measuring long. The first specimen was discovered in 1830. They have been found throughout central Europe, North Africa, the Middle East and China. Palaeobiology The earliest forms, like ''Placodus'', which lived in the early to middle Triassic, resembled barrel-bodied lizards superficially similar to the marine iguana of today, but larger. In contrast to the marine iguana, which feeds on algae, the placodonts ate molluscs and so their teeth were flat and tough to crush shells. In the earliest periods, their size was probably enough to keep away the top sea predators of the time: the sharks. However, as time passed, other kinds of carnivorous reptiles began to colonize the seas, such as ich ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Archosauromorpha
Archosauromorpha (Greek for "ruling lizard forms") is a clade of diapsid reptiles containing all reptiles more closely related to archosaurs (such as crocodilians and dinosaurs, including birds) rather than lepidosaurs (such as tuataras, lizards, and snakes). Archosauromorphs first appeared during the late Middle Permian or Late Permian, though they became much more common and diverse during the Triassic period. Although Archosauromorpha was first named in 1946, its membership did not become well-established until the 1980s. Currently Archosauromorpha encompasses four main groups of reptiles: the stocky, herbivorous allokotosaurs and rhynchosaurs, the hugely diverse Archosauriformes, and a polyphyletic grouping of various long-necked reptiles including ''Protorosaurus'', tanystropheids, and ''Prolacerta''. Other groups including pantestudines (turtles and their extinct relatives) and the semiaquatic choristoderes have also been placed in Archosauromorpha by some authors. A ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sauropterygia
Sauropterygia ("lizard flippers") is an extinct taxon of diverse, aquatic reptiles that developed from terrestrial ancestors soon after the end-Permian extinction and flourished during the Triassic before all except for the Plesiosauria became extinct at the end of that period. The plesiosaurs would continue to diversify until the end of the Mesozoic. Sauropterygians are united by a radical adaptation of their pectoral girdle, adapted to support powerful flipper strokes. Some later sauropterygians, such as the pliosaurs, developed a similar mechanism in their pelvis. Uniquely among reptiles, sauropterygians moved their tail vertically like modern cetaceans and sirenians. Origins and evolution The earliest sauropterygians appeared about 247 million years ago (Ma), at the start of the Middle Triassic: the first definite sauropterygian with exact stratigraphic datum lies within the Spathian division of the Olenekian era in South China. Early examples were small (around 60 c ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Europe
Europe is a large peninsula conventionally considered a continent in its own right because of its great physical size and the weight of its history and traditions. Europe is also considered a Continent#Subcontinents, subcontinent of Eurasia and it is located entirely in the Northern Hemisphere and mostly in the Eastern Hemisphere. Comprising the westernmost peninsulas of Eurasia, it shares the continental landmass of Afro-Eurasia with both Africa and Asia. It is bordered by the Arctic Ocean to the north, the Atlantic Ocean to the west, the Mediterranean Sea to the south and Asia to the east. Europe is commonly considered to be Boundaries between the continents of Earth#Asia and Europe, separated from Asia by the drainage divide, watershed of the Ural Mountains, the Ural (river), Ural River, the Caspian Sea, the Greater Caucasus, the Black Sea and the waterways of the Turkish Straits. "Europe" (pp. 68–69); "Asia" (pp. 90–91): "A commonly accepted division between Asia and E ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Taxonomic Rank
In biological classification, taxonomic rank is the relative level of a group of organisms (a taxon) in an ancestral or hereditary hierarchy. A common system consists of species, genus, family (biology), family, order (biology), order, class (biology), class, phylum (biology), phylum, kingdom (biology), kingdom, domain (biology), domain. While older approaches to taxonomic classification were phenomenological, forming groups on the basis of similarities in appearance, organic structure and behaviour, methods based on genetic analysis have opened the road to cladistics. A given rank subsumes under it less general categories, that is, more specific descriptions of life forms. Above it, each rank is classified within more general categories of organisms and groups of organisms related to each other through inheritance of phenotypic trait, traits or features from common ancestors. The rank of any ''species'' and the description of its ''genus'' is ''basic''; which means that to iden ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Family (biology)
Family ( la, familia, plural ') is one of the eight major hierarchical taxonomic ranks in Linnaean taxonomy. It is classified between order and genus. A family may be divided into subfamilies, which are intermediate ranks between the ranks of family and genus. The official family names are Latin in origin; however, popular names are often used: for example, walnut trees and hickory trees belong to the family Juglandaceae, but that family is commonly referred to as the "walnut family". What belongs to a family—or if a described family should be recognized at all—are proposed and determined by practicing taxonomists. There are no hard rules for describing or recognizing a family, but in plants, they can be characterized on the basis of both vegetative and reproductive features of plant species. Taxonomists often take different positions about descriptions, and there may be no broad consensus across the scientific community for some time. The publishing of new data and opini ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Basal (phylogenetics)
In phylogenetics, basal is the direction of the ''base'' (or root) of a phylogenetic tree#Rooted tree, rooted phylogenetic tree or cladogram. The term may be more strictly applied only to nodes adjacent to the root, or more loosely applied to nodes regarded as being close to the root. Note that extant taxa that lie on branches connecting directly to the root are not more closely related to the root than any other extant taxa. While there must always be two or more equally "basal" clades sprouting from the root of every cladogram, those clades may differ widely in taxonomic rank, Phylogenetic diversity, species diversity, or both. If ''C'' is a basal clade within ''D'' that has the lowest rank of all basal clades within ''D'', ''C'' may be described as ''the'' basal taxon of that rank within ''D''. The concept of a 'key innovation' implies some degree of correlation between evolutionary innovation and cladogenesis, diversification. However, such a correlation does not make a given ca ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
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