Early archosauromorph remains from the Permo-Triassic Buena Vista formation of NorthEastern Uruguay
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Biogeography, Evolutionary Studies, Paleontology, Taxonomy
- Keywords
- Diapsida, Permian, Proterosuchidae, Archosauromorpha, extinction, South America, palaeobiogeography
- Copyright
- © 2014 Ezcurra et al.
- Licence
- This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, reproduction and adaptation in any medium and for any purpose provided that it is properly attributed. For attribution, the original author(s), title, publication source (PeerJ PrePrints) and either DOI or URL of the article must be cited.
- Cite this article
- 2014. Early archosauromorph remains from the Permo-Triassic Buena Vista formation of NorthEastern Uruguay. PeerJ PrePrints 2:e678v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.678v1
Abstract
The Permo-Triassic archosauromorph record is crucial to understand the impact of the Permo-Triassic mass extinction on the early evolution of the group and its subsequent dominance in Mesozoic terrestrial ecosystems. However, the Permo-Triassic archosauromorph record is still very poor in most continents and hampers the identification of global macroevolutionary patterns. Here we describe cranial and postcranial bones from the Permo-Triassic Buena Vista Formation of northeastern Uruguay that contribute to increase the meagre early archosauromorph record from South America. A basioccipital fused to both partial exoccipitals and three cervical vertebrae are assigned to Archosauromorpha based on apomorphies or a unique combination of characters. The archosauromorph remains of the Buena Vista Formation probably represent a multi-taxonomic assemblage composed of non-archosauriform archosauromorphs and a ‘proterosuchid-grade’ animal. This assemblage does not contribute in the discussion of a Late Permian or Early Triassic age for the Buena Vista Formation, but reinforces the broad palaeobiogeographic distribution of ‘proterosuchid grade’ diapsids in Permo-Triassic beds worldwide.
Author Comment
This manuscript is a submission to PeerJ for review.