No abstract

Recent work on the Upper Gondwana Maleri Formation has enabled a more accurate and extended faunal list to be given, consisting of various kinds of fishes (dipnoans, subholostean, pleuracanth), reptiles (especially rhynchosaur, phytosaur, and aetosaurid), and a metoposaurid amphibian. A better estimate can thus be made of the age of the Maleri Formation as Upper Triassic, equivalent to the Carnian–Middle Norian Zones (inclusive) of the standard marine Triassic sequence. An Upper Gondwana inlier south-southeast of the main Maleri outcrop contains fossiliferous Maleri red clays and also a second red clay belt with a different vertebrate fauna, the Yerrapalli fauna, consisting of reptiles (including a large dicynodont and probably a theriodont and an erythrosuchoid) and amphibians, one of which may be a very large capitosaur. The new fauna seems similar in age to that of the South African Cynognathus Zone, i.e. late Lower Triassic. A fauna of this age has not previously been found in the continental Gondwana rocks of India, and if the preliminary results are confirmed it will be necessary to recognize a separate Yerrapalli Formation within the Gondwana sequence.