A late-surviving phytosaur from the northern Atlantic rift reveals climate constraints on Triassic reptile biogeography.

ABSTRACT:

Background

The origins of all major living reptile clades, including the one leading to birds, lie in the Triassic. Following the largest mass extinction in Earth's history at the end of the Permian, the earliest definite members of the three major living reptile clades, the turtles (Testudines), crocodylians and birds (Archosauria), and lizards, snakes, amphisbaenians, and Tuatara (Lepidosauria) appeared. Recent analyses of the Triassic reptile fossil record suggest that the earliest diversifications in all three of these clades were tightly controlled by abrupt paleoclimate fluctuations and concordant environmental changes. Yet, this has only been preliminarily tested using information from evolutionary trees. Phytosauria consists of superficially crocodylian-like archosaurs that

SUBMITTER: Brownstein CD 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC10351158 | biostudies-literature | 2023 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature