Taihangosuchus, new gracilisuchid from Middle Triassic of China

[Ben Creisler]

Ben Creisler

bcre...@gmail.com

A new paper:

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Taihangosuchus wuxiangensis gen. et sp. nov.

 
Xiao-Chun Wu, Zhishuai Kang, Jianru Shi, Hai-Lu You & Liyang Dong (2025)
Taihangosuchus wuxiangensis, a new gracilisuchid (Archosauria: Pseudosuchia) from the Middle Triassic of Shanxi Province, China
Historical Biology (advance online publication)
doi: https://doi.org/10.1080/08912963.2025.2537848
https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/full/10.1080/08912963.2025.2537848

LSID: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:pub:2877A471-DB2E-42B2-BC72-923640CB747E

LSID: urn:lsid:zoobank.org:act:82AC5B04-2D10-45C7-AB5D-CD3277A39038


Recently, two partial skeletons of an archosaur have been collected from the upper part of the Triassic Ermaying Formation in Shanxi Province, China, which represent a new pseudosuchian, Taihangosuchus wuxiangensis gen. et sp. nov. The new species can be diagnosed based on a set of cranial and postcranial characteristic states and assigned to Gracilisuchidae. Our phylogenetic study finds that T. wuxiangensis gen. et sp. nov. is the second most basally branching gracilisuchid and that Gracilisuchidae and Erpetosuchidae are nested together as the most basally branching clade of Pseudosuchia, implying that Gracilisuchidae diverged within a sub-clade rather than directly from the mainline of Pseudosuchia. Furthermore, Aetosauria and Ornithosuchidae form a clade at the base of Suchia. Phylogenetic patterns recovered in this study for the four basally branching clades of Pseudosuchia and the members of Gracilisuchidae are congruent with their chronostratigraphies better than those obtained in previous studies.