A tiny ornithodiran archosaur from the Triassic of Madagascar and the role of miniaturization in dinosaur and pterosaur ancestry.

ABSTRACT: Early members of the dinosaur-pterosaur clade Ornithodira are very rare in the fossil record, obscuring our understanding of the origins of this important group. Here, we describe an early ornithodiran (Kongonaphon kely gen. et sp. nov.) from the Mid-to-Upper Triassic of Madagascar that represents one of the smallest nonavian ornithodirans. Although dinosaurs and gigantism are practically synonymous, an analysis of body size evolution in dinosaurs and other archosaurs in the context of this taxon and related forms demonstrates that the earliest-diverging members of the group may have been smaller than previously thought, and that a profound miniaturization event occurred near the base of the avian stem lineage. In phylogenetic analysis, Kongonaphon is recovered as a member of

SUBMITTER: Kammerer CF 

PROVIDER: S-EPMC7395432 | biostudies-literature | 2020 Jul

REPOSITORIES: biostudies-literature