2006/01/25 by Sterling J. Nesbitt, Mark A. Norell · 1 citation
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · #Paleontology and Evolutionary Biology #Evolution and Paleontology Studies #Ichthyology and Marine Biology #Theropoda #Postcrania #Biology #Paleontology #Evolutionary biology #Taxon
paper · doi:10.1098/rspb.2005.3426
openalex publication_date 2006/01/25 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/28
Living archosaurs comprise birds (dinosaurs) and crocodylians (suchians). The morphological diversity of birds and stem group dinosaurs is tremendous and well-documented. Suchia, the archosaurian group including crocodylians, is generally considered more conservative. Here, we report a new Late Triassic suchian archosaur with unusual, highly specialized features that are convergent with ornithomimid dinosaurs. Several derived features of the skull and postcranial skeleton are identical to conditions in ornithomimids. Such cases of extreme convergence in multiple regions of the skeleton in two distantly related vertebrate taxa are rare. This suggests that these archosaurs show iterative patterns of morphological evolution. It also suggests that this group of suchians occupied the adaptive zone that was occupied by ornithomimosaurs later in the Mesozoic.