2021/01/01 by Imanol Yáñez, Diego Pol, Juan Leardi +2 · 1 citation
Earth and Planetary Sciences · Environmental Science · #Paleontology and Evolutionary Biology #Evolution and Paleontology Studies #Ichthyology and Marine Biology #Paleontology #Geology #Geography #Archaeology
paper · pdf · doi:10.4202/app.00806.2020
openalex publication_date 2021/01/01 · openalex created_date 2025/10/10 · openalex updated_date 2026/07/22
In this contribution we introduce a new Late Triassic archosaur, Incertovenator longicollum gen. et sp. nov., with an unusual combination of character states that are present in certain early avemetatarsalian and pseudosuchian archosaur clades. The holotype consists of a partial postcranial skeleton, preserving most of the axial skeleton and displaying a marked anteroposterior elongation in the cervical vertebrae. We include I. longicollum gen. et sp. nov. into one of the most comprehensive early archosaur phylogenetic data sets available, and recover it as either an early diverging avemetatarsalian, closely associated with the clade Aphanosauria and Ornithodira, or as an early diverging loricatan closely related to Mandasuchus tanyauchen in the most parsimonious trees. We further evaluate which alternative phylogenetic positions can I. longicollum gen. et sp. nov. take in the suboptimal trees, and determined which character states support those alternative positions in comparison with those of the unconstrained analysis. The analyses recover the new taxon in three main general phylogenetic placements within Archosauria, as well as one position outside this clade, highlighting widespread morphological evolutionary convergence towards neck elongation in several clades of Triassic archosauriforms.