The Triassic period documents the origin and diversification of modern amniote lineages and the Late Triassic fossil record of South America has been crucial to shed light on these early evolutionary histories. However, the faunistic changes that led to the establishment of Late Triassic ecosystems are largely ignored because of the global scarcity of fossils from assemblages a few million years older. Here we contribute to fill this gap with the description of a new tetrapod assemblage from the lowermost levels of the Chañares Formation (uppermost Middle-lower Late Triassic epochs) of Argentina, which is older than the other vertebrate assemblages of the same basin. The new assemblage is composed of therapsids, rhynchosaurids and archosaurs, and clearly differs from that of the immediately overlying and well-known historical Chañares vertebrate assemblage. The new tetrapod association is part of a phase of relatively rapidly changing vertebrate assemblage compositions, in a time span shorter than 6 million years, before the diversification of dinosaurs and other common Late Triassic tetrapods in southwestern Pangaea.

In the flat slab region of the South Central Andes (∼31-32 • S), geological observations suggest that the regional crustal structure is inherited from the accretion of different terranes during the Ordovician. These structures were later reactivated, first in extension during the Triassic and later in compression during the Andean uplift since the Miocene. Seismological observations confirmed that those fault structures extend to depth with décollement levels that accommodate current crustal shortening in the region. In order to get better insight on the regional tectonics we computed higher frequency receiver functions (RF) from local slab seismicity of intermediate ∼100 km depth. Using a common conversion point (CCP) stacking method we obtained cross sections showing high vertical resolution crustal structure at the transition between the Precordillera and the Frontal Cordillera. In addition we performed a joint inversion of our high frequency RFs with surface wave data from ambient noise tomography allowing us to constrain absolute seismic wave velocities. Our higher resolution images reveal more structural details down to a depth of 80 km and laterally over the flat slab in good agreement with previous studies. Our results help to better identify very shallow discontinuities in seismic velocities. Recent petrological analyses combined with our high-resolution RF structure correlates with a crustal mafic composition and partial eclogitization in the lower crust. We observe a shift in the crustal structure between the Precordillera (east) and the Frontal Cordillera (west). Regional seismicity and previously determined focal mechanisms superimposed over our images indicate this shifting is a thrust structure extending down to a depth of 40 km. Our results suggest the presence of a master fault between the Cuyania (Western Precordillera) and Chilenia (Frontal Cordillera) terranes that probably accommodates the crustal deformation in the Pampean flat slab region since the Late Ordovician.

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