Taxonomy, morphometry and morphospace of cranial bones of Panthasaurus gen. nov. maleriensis from the Late Triassic of India

Gondwana Vertebrate Faunas of India: Their Diversity and Intercontinental Relationships

“…This formation has yielded two distinct vertebrate assemblages (Kutty and Sengupta, 1989;Prasad et al, 2008;Bandyopadhyay, 2011;Chakravorti and Sengupta, 2019). The Maleri Formation encompasses 12 families, which represent 25 genera and species (Table 2), of which 12 and 13 taxa belonged to the lower and upper Maleri faunas, respectively.…”

“…The Maleri Formation encompasses 12 families, which represent 25 genera and species (Table 2), of which 12 and 13 taxa belonged to the lower and upper Maleri faunas, respectively. The lower Maleri fauna is characterized by an association of the phytosaur Parasuchus, the rhynchosaur Hyperodapedon and the metoposaurid Panthasaurus (Chatterjee, 1974(Chatterjee, , 1978RoyChowdhury, 1965;Chakravorti and Sengupta, 2019). Other vertebrates comprise a ptychoceratodontid, a xenacanthid, a prolacertid (?…”

“…7A-P). It has yielded a diverse fish assemblage comprising hybodontid and xenacanthid sharks, dipnoans and actinopterygians (Prasad et al, 2008;Ray et al, 2016;Bhat and Ray, 2018;Bhat et al, 2018a, b) a metoposaurid, Panthasaurus maleriensis (Sengupta, 2002;Chakravorti and Sengupta, 2019), various diapsids including the rauisuchid Tikisuchus romeri and the rhynchosaur Hyperodapedon tikiensis (Chatterjee and Mazumdar, 1987;Mukherjee and Ray, 2014). Numerous archosauriform teeth belonging to 12 distinct morphotypes have been reported from the Tiki Formation (Ray et al, 2019).…”

“…On the other hand, the metoposaurid temnopondyls are not robust Late Triassic biomarkers (Martz and Parker, 2017) as these have a long range extending from middle/late Carnian to middle/late Norian. Moreover, their global distribution is genera-specific as Koskinonodon and Apachesaurus are known from Noth America, Metoposaurus is from Europe, Arganasaurus and Dutuitosaurus is from Morocco and Panthasaurus from India (Chakravorti and Sengupta, 2019;Bufa et al, 2019). However, presence of Exaeretodon (Chatterjee, 1982) suggests a Late Carnian age for the lower Maleri Formation as this genus is essentially known from the late Carnian Hyperodapedon AZ of Santa Maria Formation of Brazil (Langer et al, 2007), and the Ischigualasto Formation of Argentina (Abdala and Ribeiro, 2010).…”

New insights into the evolution of temnospondyls

“…As previously mentioned, during the Late Triassic the capitosaurids share nonmarine environments with other groups such as the metoposaurids. The latters are the topics of the contributions of Gruntmejer et al (2019) and Chakravorti and Sengupta (2019) who used different approaches (taxonomy, paleobiology, etc.) and multiple taxa to investigate this enigmatic group: Gruntmejer et al…”