CONICET | Buscador de Institutos y Recursos Humanos

We describe here a new archosauriform specimen collected from the lower levels of the Santa Maria Formation (Middle-Late Triassic) of southern Brazil (CPEZ 239a). It is based on a basicranium, dorsal and sacral vertebrae, ten paramedian and three lateral osteoderms, and right humerus, ulna, ilium, ischium, femur, and tibia. A cladistic analysis was conducted and nested CPEZ 239a within a monophyletic group of basal archosauriforms, also composed of Doswellia from the Late Triassic of USA and Tarjadia from the Middle-Late Triassic of Argentina. This group is identified as Doswelliidae and it is supported by the presence of osteoderm ornamentation coarse, incised, composed of regular pits of equal size and contour, and the presence of an un-ornamented anterior articular bar. In addition, CPEZ 239a is more closely related to Doswellia than to other archosauriforms due to the presence of basipterygoid processes anterolaterally oriented, dorsal vertebra centra with a convex lateral surface, width of the neural arch plus ribs of the first sacral three times the length of the neural arch, and iliac blade laterally deflected, with a strongly convex dorsal margin, and a maximum length less than 3 times its maximum height. Since Doswelliidae was previously considered a monospecific clade, this study supports for the first time its validity and incorporates it to the traditionally known lineages of basal archosauriforms (e.g. Proterosuchidae, Erythrosuchidae, Proterochampsidae). The present phylogenetic analysis indicates that Doswelliidae is the closest large monophyletic entity to Archosauria, which reaches a wide paleolatitudinal distribution during the Middle-Late Triassic time span.