South American Middle Triassic continental faunas with amniotes: biostratigraphy and correlation

FERNANDO ABDALA; AGUSTIN MARTINELLI; MARINA BENTO SOARES; MARCELO DE LA FUENTE; ANA MARIA RIBEIRO

Palaeontologia Africana

Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of the Witwatersrand

Año: 2009 vol. 44 p. 83 - 87

South America has an extensive record of continental Triassic where several groups of vertebrates are represented. Their fossil record encompasses a diversified fauna of archosauriforms, including basal dinosauriforms, and the oldest dinosaurs, abundant rhynchosaurs and mammal-like therapsids (dicynodonts and cynodonts), among others groups. The Middle Triassic constitutes an important transitional period, when significant changes in amniota faunas occurred. South American deposits of this age yielded an early and much diversified fauna of dinosauriforms, as well as the first records of traversodontids, one of the most successful groups of non-mammaliaform cynodonts. In addition, the diversity of dicynodonts recovered from the Permo/Triassic extinction event, and they experienced a global record in Laurasia and Gondwana.