Paleontologists led by Dr Xiao-hong Chen of the China Geological Survey’s Wuhan Center have discovered a new species of marine reptile that lived in what is now China during the Lower Triassic, about 245 million years ago.
Eohupehsuchus brevicollis. Image credit: Chen X-h et al.
The newly-discovered creature belonged to Hupehsuchia, a group of enigmatic Triassic marine reptiles that is known exclusively from two counties in Hubei Province, China.
One of the common features of the group was a modestly long neck with 9-10 cervical vertebrae.
The new fossil, named Eohupehsuchus brevicollis, for the first time shows a short neck in this group, with six cervicals.
It was collected during field excavation in 2011 from Jialingjiang Formation in Yangping, Yuan’an County, Hubei Province, China.
“The left forelimb of this specimen is incomplete, ending with broken digits,” the scientists said.
They suspect the breakage occurred pre-burial, possibly the result of a predator attack.
“The total length of Eohupehsuchus brevicollis would be about 40 cm, assuming the body proportion of Hupehsuchus.”
Analysis of related species led Dr Chen’s team to believe that Eohupehsuchus brevicollis forms the sister taxon of Hupehsuchidae.
The results appear in a paper published this week in the open-access journal PLoS ONE.
_____
Chen X-h et al. 2014. A Small Short-Necked Hupehsuchian from the Lower Triassic of Hubei Province, China. PLoS ONE 9 (12): e115244; doi: 10.1371/journal.pone.0115244
