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Projekt Druckansicht

Neue Reptilien aus der Mitteltrias von Deutschland und die frühe Evolution der Lepidosaurier

Fachliche Zuordnung Paläontologie
Förderung Förderung von 2017 bis 2022
Projektkennung Deutsche Forschungsgemeinschaft (DFG) - Projektnummer 397562308
 
Erstellungsjahr 2022

Zusammenfassung der Projektergebnisse

The numerous new finds of reptiles from the Vellberg locality (Baden-Württemberg, Germany) have made the Middle Triassic of southern Germany one of the richest Triassic tetrapod fossillagerstätten worldwide. In the course of the present project, research focused on small diapsid reptiles with particular emphasis on the early evolution of Lepidosauromorpha. These studies were enabled by focused high-precision preparation, stacked microphotography and microtomography, with subsequent segmentation of CT data. These data provided insight into skull anatomy and tooth emplacement which proved to be essential for the understanding of diapsid diversity in the Vellberg fauna, as well as character evolution in the studied lepidosauromorphs and archosauriforms. In addition to the previously described Fraxinisaura and the geologically most ancient rhynchocephalian, we identified nine new taxa in the sample of small reptile remains from Vellberg: (1) tiny 8 cm long lepidosauromorph Vellbergia bartholomaei, (2) 50 cm long, omnivorous archosauriform Polymorphodon adorfi, (3) fragmentarily known palisade-toothed diapsid Stauromatodon mohli, (4) durophagous (potential lepidosauromorph) diapsid Quasicolognathus eothen, (5) a tiny new trilophosaurid archosauromorph and (6)-(9) four new lepidosaurmorph taxa that are yet to be named. Altogether, these new taxa highlight an unprecedented diversity of small saurian diapsids in the German Middle Triassic, among which seven taxa represent early relatives of Lepidosauria; the enigmatic genera Stauromatodon and Quasicolognathus may well also fall within Lepidosauromorpha, but a more confident phylogenetic placement requires better fossil evidence. The highly diversified and specialized dentitions of the new taxa indicate the existence of a rich terrestrial paleoecosystem preserved in the Vellberg fauna. At the same time, the tiny size of many of these taxa (and others described previously) has been discussed as evidence of a Lilliput Effect that, despite the late age of the Vellberg fauna relative to the P-T boundary, may have been caused by the unfavorable, arid conditions in the Central European Basin.

Projektbezogene Publikationen (Auswahl)

 
 

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