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Rhynchosaurs (meaning "beaked lizards") were a group of unusual herbivorous quadrupedal archosauromorphs that lived during the Triassic period. Rhynchosaurs ranged in size from the 50 cm long Rhynchosaurus to the 2 meter (6 feet) long Hyperodapedon, with the average size being 1 meter (3.3 feet). Rhynchosaurs were a widespread and worldwide taxon, being found all across the supercontinent of Pangaea. Rhynchosaur fossils have been found in Britain, South Africa, Zimbabwe, Tanzania, Madagascar, India, Brazil, Argentina, Canada and the United States, although they are poorly represented in the Northern Hemisphere fossil record. 15 species are currently regarded as valid, and another five are valid taxa still in need of a name. In some fossil assemblages, several taxa lived alongside one another, as evidenced by the four contemporaneous species were contemporaneous in the Upper Triassic Santa Maria Formation of Brazil. Rhynchosaurs went extinct during the Permian-Triassic extinction event that marked the end of the Carnian stage of the Late Triassic. Rhynchosaur fossils are very abundant in some assemblages (in some fossil localities accounting for 40 to 60% of specimens found) and the anatomy and ontogeny of a few species is comparatively well known. Early primitive forms like Mesosuchus and Howesia were more typically lizard-like in build, and had skulls rather similar to the early diapsid Younginia, except for the beak and a few other features. (Read more...)
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| Platyognathus is an extinct genus of protosuchian crocodylomorph. Fossils are known from the Early Jurassic Lower Lufeng Formation in Yunnan, China and belong to the type and only species, P. hsui. Platyognathus was first named by Chung-Chien Young in 1944 on the basis of a partial lower jaw found from the Dark Red Beds of the Lower Lufeng Formation in 1939. During World War II, the holotype was either lost or destroyed. The classification of the genus continued to be debated, as descriptions of the fragmentary jaw were all that was available to study.
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José Fernando Bonaparte (born June 14, 1928), is an Argentine paleontologist who discovered a plethora of South American dinosaurs and mentored a new generation of Argentine paleontologists like Rodolfo Coria. Bonaparte is the son of an Italian sailor. He was born in Rosario, Argentina, and grew up in Mercedes, Buenos Aires. Despite a lack of formal training in paleontology, he started collecting fossils at an early age, and created a museum in his home town. He later became the curator of the National University of Tucumán, were he was named Doctor Honoris causa in 1974, and then in the late 1970s became a senior scientist at the National Museum of Natural Sciences in Buenos Aires. Bonaparte, along with dinosaurs, has also discovered and described a number of archosaurs and primitive birds (such as Iberomesornis), and assisted with the study of other dinosaurs, such as Giganotosaurus carolinii. (Read more...)
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Palaeontology links
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