A Triassic Fauna from Madagascar, Including Early Dinosaurs
John J. Flynn,
1*
J.
Michael Parrish,
2
Berthe Rakotosamimanana,
3
William F. Simpson,
1
Robin L. Whatley,
4
André R. Wyss
4
The discovery of a Middle to Late Triassic (~225 to
230 million years old) terrestrial vertebrate fauna from Madagascar is reported. This fauna documents a temporal interval not well represented by continental vertebrate assemblages elsewhere in the world. It
contains two new prosauropod dinosaurs, representing some of the
earliest dinosaur occurrences known globally. This assemblage provides
information about the poorly understood transition to the
dinosaur-dominated faunas of the latest Triassic.
1 Department of Geology, The Field Museum,
Chicago, IL 60605, USA.
2 Department of Biological
Sciences, Northern Illinois University, DeKalb, IL 60115, USA.
3 Département de Paléontologie et
d'Anthropologie Biologique, Université d'Antananarivo,
Antananarivo 101, Madagascar.
4 Department of
Geology, University of California, Santa Barbara, CA 93106, USA.
*
To whom correspondence should be addressed. E-mail:
flynn{at}fmnh.org
