Life appearance of the non-archosaurian archosauriform, the most suitable producer of Isochirotherium gardettensis. Image credit: Fabio Manucci.
SciNews has a story about fossil footprints from the early Triassic by a archosauriform. Archosauriformes were animals that later evolved into archosaurs ("ruling lizards"), which includes dinosaurs, crocodiles, pterosaurs, and some other extinct groups, The tracks date to about 250 million years ago and were found on the Gardetta Plateau in the Western Alps. For more, information, there was a paper published in PeerJ.
The paleontologists assigned the tracks to the new ichnospecies, Isochirotherium gardettensis, and interpreted them as produced by a large-bodied, predatory archosauriform, probably erythrosuchid, trackmaker.
They were made approximately 250 million years ago (Early Triassic epoch), soon after the Permian-Triassic mass extinction event.
“This new discovery provides further evidence for the presence of archosauriformes at low latitudes during the Early Triassic epoch,” the researchers said.
“It supports a model in which the Permian-Triassic mass extinction did not completely vacate low-latitude lands from tetrapods that therefore would have been able to cope with the extreme hot temperatures of Pangaea mainland.”
