Early Triassic Teyujagua postcrania

De-Oliveira et al 2024 reported,
“Teyujagua paradoxa is a remarkable early archosauromorph from the Lower
Triassic Sanga do Cabral Formation, Brazil. The species was originally described
from an almost complete skull and a few associated cervical vertebrae, and no further
postcranial elements were known at that time.”

“Here, we describe…new postcranial material, which is composed of cervical, dorsal, sacral and caudal vertebrae, limbs, pectoral and pelvic girdles, ribs, and gastralia.”

The authors conclude,
“Teyujagua paradoxa occupies a notable position, suggesting an intermediate morphology between early archosauromorphs and proterosuchids.”

Unfortunately,
due to taxon exclusion and borrowing a cladogram the authors thought several lepidosauromorphs were archosauromorphs. The authors wrote, “The discovered postcranial material of UNIPAMPA 653 was incorporated into the dataset used by Pinheiro et al. (2020), which is based on Butler et al. (2019). This, in turn, is based on the phylogeny proposed by Ezcurra (2016).”

Don’t borrow cladograms. That involves trust. Trust = faith, not science.

Earlier,
here and here, when just the skull was known, little Teyujagua nested between two larger specimens of Proterosuchus + Chasmatosaurus and Doswellia + Elachistosuchus + Choristodera + Parasuchia + Proterochampsidae in the LRT.

The new post-crania
(UNIPAMPA 653) includes no surprises.

Teyujagua paradoxa
(Pinheiro et al. 2016, De-Oliveira 2024; Early Triassic) was originally described as, “transitional in morphology between archosauriforms and more primitive reptiles…as the sister taxon to Archosauriformes.” Instead the large reptile tree recovered Teyujagua as a phylogenetically miniaturized Proterosuchus, phylogenetically nesting deep within that clade. The secondary reduction of the antorbital fenestra, also seen in Youngina BPI 2871 , no doubt caused some of the earlier mistake and the rest can be blamed on taxon exclusion along with inaccurate tracings.

Technical difficulties continue.
Images cannot be uploaded or applied from any source, even from my WordPress library. Click the links above to see the images. Click here and here to see earlier posts on this taxon.

References
De-Oliveira TM, Da Silva JL, Kerber L and Pinheiro FL 2024. The postcranial skeleton of Teyujagua paradoxa (Reptliia: Archosauromorpha) from the early Triassic of South America. The Anatomical Record DOI: 10.1002/ar.25391
Pinheiro FL, França MAG, Lacerda MB, Butler RJ and Schultz CL 2016. An exceptional fossil skull from South America and the origins of the archosauriform radiation. Nature Scientific Reports 6:22817 DOI: 10.1038/srep22817.

wiki/Teyujagua