The Complete Skull and Skeleton of an Early Dinosaur

Sereno, Paul C.; Novas, Fernando E.

doi:10.1126/science.258.5085.1137

Cited by 121 publications

(83 citation statements)

References 11 publications

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“…Relationships within this clade are well understood on the whole: studies generally agree that dinosaurs are a monophyletic group, pterosaurs are closely related to dinosaurs, and several dinosauromorphs are the closest relatives to dinosaurs (Novas 1989(Novas , 1992(Novas , 1996Sereno & Novas 1992;Ezcurra 2006;.…”

Section: Avemetatarsaliamentioning

confidence: 99%

The higher-level phylogeny of Archosauria (Tetrapoda: Diapsida)

Brusatte

Benton

Desojo

et al. 2010

Journal of Systematic Palaeontology

217

318

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Crown group Archosauria, which includes birds, dinosaurs, crocodylomorphs, and several extinct Mesozoic groups, is a primary division of the vertebrate tree of life. However, the higher-level phylogenetic relationships within Archosauria are poorly resolved and controversial, despite years of study. The phylogeny of crocodile-line archosaurs (Crurotarsi) is particularly contentious, and has been plagued by problematic taxon and character sampling. Recent discoveries and renewed focus on archosaur anatomy enable the compilation of a new dataset, which assimilates and standardizes character data pertinent to higher-level archosaur phylogeny, and is scored across the largest group of taxa yet analysed. This dataset includes 47 new characters (25% of total) and eight taxa that have yet to be included in an analysis, and total taxonomic sampling is more than twice that of any previous study. This analysis produces a well-resolved phylogeny, which recovers mostly traditional relationships within Avemetatarsalia, places Phytosauria as a basal crurotarsan clade, finds a close relationship between Aetosauria and Crocodylomorpha, and recovers a monophyletic Rauisuchia comprised of two major subclades. Support values are low, suggesting rampant homoplasy and missing data within Archosauria, but the phylogeny is highly congruent with stratigraphy. Comparison with alternative analyses identifies numerous scoring differences, but indicates that character sampling is the main source of incongruence. The phylogeny implies major missing lineages in the Early Triassic and may support a Carnian-Norian extinction event.

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Section: Avemetatarsaliamentioning

confidence: 99%

The higher-level phylogeny of Archosauria (Tetrapoda: Diapsida)

Brusatte

Benton

Desojo

et al. 2010

Journal of Systematic Palaeontology

217

318

View full text Add to dashboard Cite

show abstract

“…Scale = 200 km. Novas 1992, Novas 1997, Langer 2004, Bittencourt and Kellner 2009, Alcober and Martinez 2010, Langer et al 2010. Norian records from the Chinle Formation (Long andMurry 1995, Nesbitt et al 2007) and Dockum Group (Nesbitt and Chatterjee 2008) have been recurrently mentioned (Irmis et al 2007a, Nesbitt et al 2009, 2010, but these are based on less complete material.…”

Section: Gondwana II Supersequence (Paraná Basin)mentioning

confidence: 99%

Mesozoic dinosaurs from Brazil and their biogeographic implications

Bittencourt

Langer

2011

An. Acad. Bras. Ciênc.

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The record of dinosaur body-fossils in the Brazilian Mesozoic is restricted to the Triassic of Rio Grande do Sul and Cretaceous of various parts of the country. This includes 21 named species, two of which were regarded as nomina dubia, and 19 consensually assigned to Dinosauria. Additional eight supraspecific taxa have been identified based on fragmentary specimens and numerous dinosaur footprints known in Brazil. In fact, most Brazilian specimens related to dinosaurs are composed of isolated teeth and vertebrae. Despite the increase of fieldwork during the last decade, there are still no dinosaur body-fossils of Jurassic age and the evidence of ornithischians in Brazil is very limited. Dinosaur faunas from this country are generally correlated with those from other parts of Gondwana throughout the Mesozoic. During the Late Triassic, there is a close correspondence to Argentina and other south-Pangaea areas. Mid-Cretaceous faunas of northeastern Brazil resemble those of coeval deposits of North Africa and Argentina. Southern hemisphere spinosaurids are restricted to Africa and Brazil, whereas abelisaurids are still unknown in the Early Cretaceous of the latter. Late Cretaceous dinosaur assemblages of south-central Brazil are endemic only to genus or, more conspicuously, to species level, sharing closely related taxa with Argentina, Madagascar, Indo-Pakistan and, to a lesser degree, continental Africa.

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“…In particular, new fossil material from Argentina (Sereno and Novas, 1992;Sereno et al, 1993;Martinez and Alcober, 2009), Brazil (Langer et al, 1999;Leal et al, 2004;Ferigolo and Langer, 2007), Africa (Yates and Kitching, 2003;Butler et al, 2007;Nesbitt et al, 2010;Yates et al, 2010), Europe (Dzik, 2003), and southwestern North America (Irmis et al, 2007a;Nesbitt et al, 2009b) has clarified the relationships of the first dinosaurs and their close relatives. Reanalysis of existing specimens has improved our understanding of character evolution on the lineage leading to Dinosauria (e.g., Sereno and Arcucci, 1994a,b;Langer and Benton, 2006;Brusatte et al, 2010b) and has changed our understanding of the distribution of early dinosaurs in time and space (Parker et al, 2005;Irmis et al, 2007b;Nesbitt et al, 2007).…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

The origin and early radiation of dinosaurs

Brusatte

Nesbitt

Irmis

et al. 2010

Earth-Science Reviews

240

214

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Dinosaurs were remarkably successful during the Mesozoic and one subgroup, birds, remain an important component of modern ecosystems. Although the extinction of non-avian dinosaurs at the end of the Cretaceous has been the subject of intense debate, comparatively little attention has been given to the origin and early evolution of dinosaurs during the Late Triassic and Early Jurassic, one of the most important evolutionary radiations in earth history. Our understanding of this keystone event has dramatically changed over the past 25 years, thanks to an influx of new fossil discoveries, reinterpretations of long-ignored specimens, and quantitative macroevolutionary analyses that synthesize anatomical and geological data. Here we provide an overview of the first 50 million years of dinosaur history, with a focus on the large-scale patterns that characterize the ascent of dinosaurs from a small, almost marginal group of reptiles in the Late Triassic to the preeminent terrestrial vertebrates of the Jurassic and Cretaceous. We provide both a biological and geological background for early dinosaur history. Dinosaurs are deeply nested among the archosaurian reptiles, diagnosed by only a small number of characters, and are subdivided into a number of major lineages. The first unequivocal dinosaurs are known from the late Carnian of South America, but the presence of their sister group in the Middle Triassic implies that dinosaurs possibly originated much earlier. The three major dinosaur lineages, theropods, sauropodomorphs, and ornithischians, are all known from the Triassic, when continents were joined into the supercontinent Pangaea and global climates were hot and arid. Although many researchers have long suggested that dinosaurs outcompeted other reptile groups during the Triassic, we argue that the ascent of dinosaurs was more of a matter of contingency and opportunism. Dinosaurs were overshadowed in most Late Triassic ecosystems by crocodile-line archosaurs and showed no signs of outcompeting their rivals. Instead, the rise of dinosaurs was a two-stage process, as dinosaurs expanded in taxonomic diversity, morphological disparity, and absolute faunal abundance only after the extinction of most crocodile-line reptiles and other groups.

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The Complete Skull and Skeleton of an Early Dinosaur

Cited by 121 publications

References 11 publications

The higher-level phylogeny of Archosauria (Tetrapoda: Diapsida)

The higher-level phylogeny of Archosauria (Tetrapoda: Diapsida)

Mesozoic dinosaurs from Brazil and their biogeographic implications

The origin and early radiation of dinosaurs

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