The first report of an archosaur from the Kayenta Formation of Washington County, Utah
- Published
- Accepted
- Subject Areas
- Biogeography, Evolutionary Studies, Paleontology
- Keywords
- archosaur, Kayenta Formation, osteoderm, Utah, Early Jurassic, Washington County, Glen Canyon Group
- Copyright
- © 2015 Gay 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
- 2015. The first report of an archosaur from the Kayenta Formation of Washington County, Utah. PeerJ PrePrints 3:e848v1 https://doi.org/10.7287/peerj.preprints.848v1
Abstract
The Kayenta Formation has yielded numerous tetrapod fossils, including, amphibians, theropods, prosauropods, ornithischians, crocodylomorphs, sphenodonts, tritylodonts, pterosaurs, turtles, and rare mammals. Despite the phylogenetic diversity of the preserved animals, virtually all of the vertebrate fossils have come from the Ward Terrace area of north-central Arizona, on the Navajo Nation Reservation. Here we describe the first remains of a tetrapod found in the Kayenta Formation of Washington County, Utah. Tetrapod body fossils from the Kayenta Formation in southwestern Utah are proving to be very rare however, in contrast to common vertebrate tracks. The specimen described herein is likely the remains of a sphenosuchian crocodylomorph.
Author Comment
We will be submitting this Preprint to PeerJ for review in the future.