Premise of research. During the ongoing investigation of Upper Triassic–Lower Cretaceous plant macrofossils from Svalbard, Norway, some ginkgoalean leaf fossils were found from Carnian and Aptian deposits of Spitsbergen and Edgeøya that represent new ginkgophyte species. One new species is described asBaiera aquilonia sp. nov., and one ginkgophyte leaf is assigned to Ginkgoites sp. Along with t...

Triassic successions of the present-day Arctic contain abundant and diverse assemblages nonmarine palynomorphs that have provided important biostratigraphic information. Dinoflagellate cyst are biostratigraphically useful in marine intervals Upper Triassic. Based on published records, we present a compilation 78 last occurrences (LOs), first (FOs), some abundance events anticipated to correlati...

Abstract Calcium isotopes (δ 44/40 Ca) are particularly useful in palaeo‐environmental studies due to the key role of carbonate minerals continental weathering and their formation seawater. The calcium isotope ratio can provide hints on past changes fluxes, environmental shifts, ecological factors alternatively diagenesis rocks. investigation Late Triassic record offers a great opportunity eval...

Six localities in the lower Chinle Group of central New Mexico yield a tetrapod fauna consisting of the diminutive metoposaurid cf. Apachesaurus sp., and indeterminate large metoposaurids (probably Buettneria sp.), the phytosaur Rutiodon sp., indeterminate phytosaurs, the aetosaurs Desmatosuchus sp. and cf Stagonolepis sp., a probable theropod, and other, indeterminate archosaurs. Five of these...

Ornithischian dinosaur body fossils are extremely rare in Triassic rocks worldwide, and to date the majority of such fossils consist of isolated teeth. Revueltosaurus is the most common Upper Triassic ornithischian dinosaur and is known from Chinle Group strata in New Mexico and Arizona. Historically, all large (>1 cm tall) and many small ornithischian dinosaur teeth from the Chinle have been r...

The origin of the limbless caecilians remains a lasting question in vertebrate evolution. Molecular phylogenies and morphology support that caecilians are the sister taxon of batrachians (frogs and salamanders), from which they diverged no later than the early Permian. Although recent efforts have discovered new, early members of the batrachian lineage, the record of pre-Cretaceous caecilians i...

We present a holistic approach to the study of early archosauriform evolution by integrating body and track records. The ichnological record supports a Late Permian-Early Triassic radiation of archosauriforms not well documented by skeletal material, and new footprints from the Upper Permian of the southern Alps (Italy) provide evidence for a diversity not yet sampled by body fossils. The integ...

The upper Triassic deposits of the Selous Basin in south Tanzania have not been prospected for fossil tetrapods since the middle of last century, when Gordon M. Stockley collected two rhynchosaur bone fragments from the so called "Tunduru beds". Here we present the results of a field trip conducted in July 2015 to the vicinities of Tunduru and Msamara, Ruvuma Region, Tanzania, in search for sim...

Ornithischian dinosaurs are one of the most taxonomically diverse dinosaur clades during the Mesozoic, yet their origin and early diversification remain virtually unknown. In recent years, several new Triassic ornithischian taxa have been proposed, mostly based upon isolated teeth. New discoveries of skeletal material of some of these tooth taxa indicate that these teeth can no longer be assign...

The global Triassic timescale based on tetrapod biochronology remains a robust tool for both global and regional age assignment and correlation. The Lootsbergian and Nonesian land-vertebrate faunachrons (LVFs) are of Early Triassic age; cross correlation of part of the Lootsbergian to the Olenekian and all or part of the Nonesian to the Anisian lacks support. In the South African Karoo basin, b...