Trilophosauridae

Trilophosaurids
Temporal range: Triassic
restoration of Trilophosaurus
Scientific classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Clade: Allokotosauria
Order: Trilophosauria
Romer, 1956
Family: Trilophosauridae
Gregory, 1945
Genera
Synonyms

Teraterpetidae Sues, 2003

Trilophosaurs are lizard-like Triassic allokotosaur reptiles related to the archosaurs. The best known genus is Trilophosaurus, a herbivore up to 2.5 meters long. It had a short, unusually heavily built skull, equipped with massive, broad flattened cheek teeth with sharp shearing surfaces for cutting up tough plant material. Teeth are absent from the premaxilla and front of the lower jaw, which in life were probably equipped with a horny beak.

Trilophosaurus buettneri

The skull is also unusual in that the lower temporal opening is missing, giving the appearance of a euryapsid skull, and originally the Trilophosaurs were classified with placodonts and sauropterygia. Carroll 1988 suggests that the lower opening may have been lost to strengthen the skull.

Trilophosaurs are so far known only from the Late Triassic of North America and Europe.

Below is a cladogram showing the phylogenetic relationships of Trilophosauridae within Archosauromorpha as recovered by Nesbitt et al. (2015).[1]

 Sauria 

Lepidosauromorpha


 Archosauromorpha 

Protorosaurus speneri



 Tanystropheidae 

Macrocnemus bassanii





Langobardisaurus pandolfii



Tanytrachelos ahynis





Amotosaurus rotfeldensis



Tanystropheus longobardicus





 Crocopoda sensu Ezcurra (2016) 
 Rhynchosauria 

Mesosuchus browni




Rhynchosaurus articeps



Teyumbaita sulcognathus







Archosauriformes



Prolacerta broomi



 Allokotosauria 

Pamelaria dolichotrachela



 Azendohsauridae 

Azendohsaurus laaroussii



Azendohsaurus madagaskarensis



 Trilophosauridae 

Teraterpeton hrynewichorum




Trilophosaurus buettneri


 Spinosuchus caseanus 

"Trilophosaurus" jacobsi



Spinosuchus caseanus holotype












References

  1. Nesbitt, S.J.; Flynn, J.J.; Pritchard, A.C.; Parrish, M.J.; Ranivoharimanana, L.; Wyss, A.R. (2015). "Postcranial osteology of Azendohsaurus madagaskarensis (?Middle to Upper Triassic, Isalo Group, Madagascar) and its systematic position among stem archosaur reptiles". Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History (398): 1–126. doi:10.5531/sd.sp.15. ISSN 0003-0090.

Sources

External links

This article is issued from Wikipedia - version of the Tuesday, May 03, 2016. The text is available under the Creative Commons Attribution/Share Alike but additional terms may apply for the media files.