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Teleocrater
''Teleocrater'' (meaning "completed basin", in reference to its closed acetabulum) is a genus of avemetatarsalian archosaur from the Middle Triassic Manda Formation of Tanzania. The name was coined by English paleontologist Alan Charig in his 1956 doctoral dissertation, but was only formally published in 2017 by Sterling Nesbitt and colleagues. The genus contains the type and only species ''T. rhadinus''. Uncertainty over the affinities of ''Teleocrater'' have persisted since Charig's initial publication; they were not resolved until Nesbitt ''et al.'' performed a phylogenetic analysis. They found that ''Teleocrater'' is most closely related to the similarly enigmatic ''Yarasuchus'', '' Dongusuchus'', and ''Spondylosoma'' in a group that was named the Aphanosauria. Aphanosauria was found to be the sister group of the Ornithodira, the group containing dinosaurs and pterosaurs. A carnivorous quadruped measuring long, ''Teleocrater'' is notable for its unusually long neck verte ...
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Teleocrater V1
''Teleocrater'' (meaning "completed basin", in reference to its closed acetabulum) is a genus of avemetatarsalian archosaur from the Middle Triassic Manda Formation of Tanzania. The name was coined by English paleontologist Alan Charig in his 1956 doctoral dissertation, but was only formally published in 2017 by Sterling Nesbitt and colleagues. The genus contains the type and only species ''T. rhadinus''. Uncertainty over the affinities of ''Teleocrater'' have persisted since Charig's initial publication; they were not resolved until Nesbitt ''et al.'' performed a phylogenetic analysis. They found that ''Teleocrater'' is most closely related to the similarly enigmatic ''Yarasuchus'', ''Dongusuchus'', and ''Spondylosoma'' in a group that was named the Aphanosauria. Aphanosauria was found to be the sister group of the Avemetatarsalia, Ornithodira, the group containing dinosaurs and pterosaurs. A carnivorous quadruped measuring long, ''Teleocrater'' is notable for its unusually lon ...
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Yarasuchus
''Yarasuchus'' (meaning "red crocodile") is an extinct genus of avemetatarsalian archosaur that lived during the Anisian stage of the Middle Triassic of India.Bandyopadhyay, S. and Sengupta, D. P. (1999). Middle Triassic vertebrate faunas from India. ''Journal of African Earth Sciences'' 29: 233–241. The genus was named and described in 2005 from a collection of disarticulated but fairly complete fossil material found from the Middle Triassic Yerrapalli Formation. The material is thought to be from two individuals, possibly three, with one being much more complete and articulated than the other. The type and only species is ''Y. deccanensis''. ''Yarasuchus'' was a quadruped roughly long, with an elongated neck and tall spines on its vertebrae. Unlike other quadrupedal Triassic reptiles, the limbs and shoulders of ''Yarasuchus'' were slender, and more like those of ornithodirans. ''Yarasuchus'' has had a complicated taxonomic history, after originally being described as a " ...
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Aphanosauria
Aphanosauria ("hidden lizards") is an extinct group of reptiles distantly related to dinosaurs (including birds). They are at the base of a group known as Avemetatarsalia, one of two main branches of archosaurs. The other main branch, Pseudosuchia, includes modern crocodilians. Aphanosaurs possessed features from both groups, indicating that they are the oldest and most primitive known clade of avemetatarsalians, at least in terms of their position on the archosaur family tree. Other avemetatarsalians include the flying pterosaurs, small bipedal lagerpetids, herbivorous silesaurids, and the incredibly diverse dinosaurs, which survive to the present day in the form of birds. Aphanosauria is formally defined as the most inclusive clade containing '' Teleocrater rhadinus'' and '' Yarasuchus deccanensis'' but not ''Passer domesticus'' (house sparrow) or ''Crocodylus niloticus'' (Nile crocodile). This group was first recognized during the description of ''Teleocrater''. Although only ...
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Manda Formation
The Manda Formation (also known as the Manda Beds) is a Middle Triassic (Anisian?) or possibly Late Triassic (Carnian?) geologic formation in Tanzania. It preserves fossils of many terrestrial vertebrates from the Triassic, including some of the earliest dinosauromorph archosaurs. The formation is often considered to be Anisian in age according to general tetrapod biochronology hypotheses and correlations to the ''Cynognathus'' Assemblage Zone of South Africa. However, some recent studies cast doubt to this age, suggesting that parts deposits may actually be younger (Carnian) in age. History of study One of the first to study rocks of the Manda Formation was British geologist G. M. Stockley. In 1932, Stockley explored the geology of the Ruhuhu Basin in Tanzania. He called a series of layers dating from the Late Carboniferous to the Middle Triassic the Songea Series and divided it into eight units labelled K1-K8. Stockley was also the first to describe fossils from these rocks, n ...
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Avemetatarsalia
Avemetatarsalia (meaning "bird metatarsals") is a clade of diapsid reptiles containing all archosaurs more closely related to birds than to crocodilians. The two most successful groups of avemetatarsalians were the dinosaurs and pterosaurs. Dinosaurs were the largest terrestrial animals for much of the Mesozoic Era, and one group of small feathered dinosaurs (Aves, i.e. birds) has survived up to the present day. Pterosaurs were the first flying vertebrates and persisted through the Mesozoic before dying out at the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction event. Both dinosaurs and pterosaurs appeared in the Triassic Period, shortly after avemetatarsalians as a whole. The name Avemetatarsalia was first established by British palaeontologist Michael Benton in 1999. An alternate name is Panaves, or "all birds", in reference to its definition containing all animals, living or extinct, which are more closely related to birds than to crocodilians. Although dinosaurs and pterosaurs were th ...
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Avemetatarsalia
Avemetatarsalia (meaning "bird metatarsals") is a clade of diapsid reptiles containing all archosaurs more closely related to birds than to crocodilians. The two most successful groups of avemetatarsalians were the dinosaurs and pterosaurs. Dinosaurs were the largest terrestrial animals for much of the Mesozoic Era, and one group of small feathered dinosaurs (Aves, i.e. birds) has survived up to the present day. Pterosaurs were the first flying vertebrates and persisted through the Mesozoic before dying out at the Cretaceous-Paleogene (K-Pg) extinction event. Both dinosaurs and pterosaurs appeared in the Triassic Period, shortly after avemetatarsalians as a whole. The name Avemetatarsalia was first established by British palaeontologist Michael Benton in 1999. An alternate name is Panaves, or "all birds", in reference to its definition containing all animals, living or extinct, which are more closely related to birds than to crocodilians. Although dinosaurs and pterosaurs were th ...
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Sterling Nesbitt
Sterling Nesbitt (born March 25, 1982, in Mesa, Arizona) is an American paleontologist best known for his work on the origin and early evolutionary patterns of archosaurs. He is currently an associate professor at Virginia Tech in the Department of Geosciences. Biography Sterling Nesbitt received his B.A. in integrative biology with a minor in geology from the University of California Berkeley in 2004. He received his PhD from Columbia University in 2009, completing the majority of his research at the American Museum of Natural History in New York City. He subsequently held postdoctoral researcher positions at the University of Texas at Austin, the University of Washington, and the Field Museum. He is currently an associate professor in thDepartment of Geosciencesat Virginia Tech in Blacksburg, Virginia. He is also a research associate/affiliate of the American Museum of Natural History, the Vertebrate Paleontology Lab at The University of Texas at Austin, the Virginia Museum of Nat ...
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Archosaur
Archosauria () is a clade of diapsids, with birds and crocodilians as the only living representatives. Archosaurs are broadly classified as reptiles, in the cladistic sense of the term which includes birds. Extinct archosaurs include non-avian dinosaurs, pterosaurs, and extinct relatives of crocodilians. Modern paleontologists define Archosauria as a crown group that includes the most recent common ancestor of living birds and crocodilians, and all of its descendants. The base of Archosauria splits into two clades: Pseudosuchia, which includes crocodilians and their extinct relatives, and Avemetatarsalia, which includes birds and their extinct relatives (such as non-avian dinosaurs and pterosaurs). Older definitions of the group Archosauria rely on shared morphological characteristics, such as an antorbital fenestra in the skull, serrated teeth, and an upright stance. Some extinct reptiles, such as proterosuchids and euparkeriids, possessed these features yet originated pri ...
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Dongusuchus
''Dongusuchus'' (meaning ''Donguz River crocodile'' in Greek, for the area where the type specimen was foundSennikov, A. G. (1988) Novyye rauizukhidy iz triasa yevropeyskoy chasti SSSR. ''Paleontol. Zhurn.'' 1990 (2): 124-128 Moscow.) is an extinct genus of archosaur. Fossils have been found from the Donguz Formation outcropping on the banks of the Donguz River in the Orenburg Oblast of Russia. They are associated with a fossil assemblage called the ''Eryosuchus'' Fauna, named after the capitosaurid '' Eryosuchus'', the most common organism found from the assemblage. The locality dates back to the Anisian and early Ladinian stages of the Middle Triassic.Gower, D. J. and Sennikov, A. G. (2000). Early archosaurs from Russia. In M. J. Benton, E. N. Kurochkin, M. A. Shishkin, D. M. Unwin (eds.), ''The Age of Dinosaurs in Russia and Mongolia''. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge. pp. 140-159 Sennikov (1988) and Gower and Sennikov (2000) suggested that ''Dongusuchus'' was a grac ...
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Spondylosoma
''Spondylosoma'' (meaning "vertebra body") is a genus of avemetatarsalian archosaur belonging to the clade Aphanosauria from the late Ladinian-age Middle Triassic Lower Santa Maria Formation in Paleorrota Geopark, Brazil. History Friedrich von Huene based the genus on a fragmentary postcranial skeleton held at the University of Tübingen. This skeleton includes two teeth, two cervical vertebrae, four dorsal vertebrae, three sacral vertebrae, scapulae, part of a humerus, part of a femur, and part of a pubis. At the time, he thought it was a prosauropod.von Huene, F. (1942). ''Die fossilen Reptilien des südamerikanischen Gondwanalandes.'' C.H. Beck:Munich, 342 p. erman/ref> With the discovery of the basal dinosaur '' Staurikosaurus'', ''Spondylosoma'' drew attention as a possible relative. Authors went back and forth on the question, considering it either as a basal dinosaur, or as a "thecodont" or other basal archosaur. In 2000, Peter Galton noted that it lacks dinosaurian ...
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Maxilla
The maxilla (plural: ''maxillae'' ) in vertebrates is the upper fixed (not fixed in Neopterygii) bone of the jaw formed from the fusion of two maxillary bones. In humans, the upper jaw includes the hard palate in the front of the mouth. The two maxillary bones are fused at the intermaxillary suture, forming the anterior nasal spine. This is similar to the mandible (lower jaw), which is also a fusion of two mandibular bones at the mandibular symphysis. The mandible is the movable part of the jaw. Structure In humans, the maxilla consists of: * The body of the maxilla * Four processes ** the zygomatic process ** the frontal process of maxilla ** the alveolar process ** the palatine process * three surfaces – anterior, posterior, medial * the Infraorbital foramen * the maxillary sinus * the incisive foramen Articulations Each maxilla articulates with nine bones: * two of the cranium: the frontal and ethmoid * seven of the face: the nasal, zygomatic, lacrimal, inferior n ...
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