Search

Herein we describe phytosaurs from thin fluvial overbank sandstones of the Upper Triassic Malmros Klint Formation of the Fleming Fjord Group (central East Greenland). The new sample includes more than 150 disarticulated bones and teeth from small to large specimens belonging to at least four individuals. The fossils mostly consist of teeth and postcranial elements and permit the recognition of a new species of Mystriosuchus, M. alleroq, diagnosed by an L-shaped quadratojugal whose anterior suture trends anterodorsally and a tripartite degree of heterodonty. Humeral diaphyseal histology of one specimen reveals a fairly compact cortex that surrounds a cancellous medullary region followed by a remodeling zone containing scattered secondary osteons. Primary bone tissue is parallel-fibred with a moderate to low vascular density. The cortex is cyclically interrupted by distinct growth marks indicating a seasonal environment. A change in growth rate from moderate to low is documented within the outer cortex, indicating that at least this individual was close to somatic maturity. Mystriosuchus has formerly been known as an exclusively European taxon. The new findings support the European faunal influence in East Greenland during the Late Triassic inferred from other taxa such as temnospondyls and archosaurs. The mid-late Norian age of European Mystriosuchus suggests an additional age constraint for the vertebrate-bearing portion of the Malmros Klint Formation.

During the Triassic, Batrachia diverged into ancestors of frogs (Salientia) and salamanders (Caudata). Fossils of Triassic batrachians are rare and found only in a few outcrops, such as the Middle Sakamena Formation of Madagascar (Induan). Only three Triassic taxa have been described, the two early frogs Triadobatrachus and Czatkiobatrachus and the early salamander Triassurus. Here we describe a right ilium, collected in 1991, attributed to the first batrachian from the Late Triassic Carlsberg Fjord Member (orsted Dal Formation, Fleming Fjord Group) in the Jameson Land Basin, located in central East Greenland. The fossil specimen only displays the proximal part of a right ilium, missing its shaft. After a thorough comparison with several clades (lizards, temnospondyls, salamanders and frogs), we consider the specimen as a lissamphibian sharing feature with salientians and anurans: squarish acetabular region, deeply concave acetabular surface, laterally projecting acetabular rim, flat mesial surface. It is the youngest Triassic specimen of Batrachia to date and one of the northernmost of the Late Triassic.

The Kap Stewart Group (Rhaetian-Sinemurian, Triassic–Early Jurassic) of the Jameson Land Basin in central East Greenland has traditionally been regarded as a strictly continental unit with delta and perennial lake sediments. New finds of plesiosaur bone remain in a thin storm deposited sandstone bed in the middle part of the Rhætelv Formation of the Kap Stewart Group, however, indicates a likely period of marine influence. At the study area at the eastern margin of the basin, the Rhætelv Formation is 300-m thick and overlies unconformably the Norian Fleming Fjord Group. The bone-bearing sandstone occurs 190 m above the base of the group and is closely associated with black laminated mudstones; palynological investigation of three samples from these mudstones indicates that they are of a younger Hettangian age. The Hettangian was a relatively short stage (201.3–199.5 Ma) and elsewhere characterized by two episodes of sea-level highstands. Assuming that the marine incursion in the Jameson land Basin evidenced by the plesiosaur fossil remains took place during the youngest of these sea-level highstands, the bone-bearing bed of the Rhætelv Formation can be dated to 200 Ma and thereby gives the first numerical age constraint of this hitherto poorly dated succession.

The Late Triassic (Norian) outcrops of the Malmros Klint Formation, Jameson Land (Green-land) have yielded numerous specimens of non-sauropod sauropodomorphs. Relevant fossils were briefly reported in 1994 and were assigned to Plateosaurus trossingensis. However, continuous new findings of early non-sauropod sauropodomorphs around the globe facilitate comparisons and allow us to now revise this material. Here, the non-sauropod sauropodomorph Issi saaneq gen. et sp. nov. is described based on two almost complete and articulated skulls. The two skulls represent a middle-stage juvenile and a late-stage juvenile or subadult. Issi saaneq differs from all other sauropodomorphs by several unique traits: (1) a small foramen at the medial surface of the premaxilla; (2) an anteropos-teriorly elongated dorsoposterior process of the squamosal; (3) a relatively high quadrate relative to rostrum height; (4) a well-developed posterodorsal process of the articular. These features cannot be explained by taphonomy, ontogeny, or intraspecific variation. Issi saaneq shows affinities to Brazilian plateosaurids and the European Plateosaurus, being recovered as the sister clade of the latter in our phylogenetic analysis. It is the northernmost record of a Late Triassic sauropodomorph, and a new dinosaur species erected for Greenland. Issi saaneq broadens our knowledge about the evolution of plateosaurid sauropodomorphs.

The earliest dinosaurs (theropods and sauropodomorphs) are found in fossiliferous early Late Triassic strata dated to about 230 million years ago (Ma), mainly in northwestern Argentina and southern Brazil in the Southern Hemisphere temperate belt of what was Gondwana in Pangea. Sauropodomorphs, which are not known for the entire Triassic in then tropical North America, eventually appear 15 million years later in the Northern Hemisphere temperate belt of Laurasia. The Pangea supercontinent was traversable in principle by terrestrial vertebrates, so the main barrier to be surmounted for dispersal between hemispheres was likely to be climatic; in particular, the intense aridity of tropical desert belts and unstable climate in the equatorial humid belt accompanying high atmospheric pCO(2) that characterized the Late Triassic. We revisited the chronostratigraphy of the dinosaurbearing Fleming Fjord Group of central East Greenland and, with additional data, produced a correlation of a detailed magnetostratigraphy from more than 325 m of composite section from two field areas to the age-calibrated astrochronostratigraphic polarity time scale. This age model places the earliest occurrence of sauropodomorphs (Plateosaurus) in their northernmost range to similar to 214 Ma. The timing is within the 215 to 212 Ma (mid-Norian) window of a major, robust dip in atmospheric pCO(2) of uncertain origin but which may have resulted in sufficiently lowered climate barriers that facilitated the initial major dispersal of the herbivorous sauropodomorphs to the temperate belt of the Northern Hemisphere. Indications are that carnivorous theropods may have had dispersals that were less subject to the same climate constraints.

We constrain the age of a cobble beach ridge system in Greenland using Optically Stimulated Luminescence (OSL) dating of buried cobble surfaces. Luminescence signals fromsix cobbles are measured using infrared (IR) stimulation at 50 degrees C(IR50) and 180 degrees C(pIRIR(180)); these cobbles represent four progressively younger beach ridges lying between similar to 35 and similar to 6 mabove present sea level. Luminescence-depth profiles show that the IR50 signals in all the samples and pIRIR(180) signals in four out of six samples are well bleached to depths >1.2 mminto the cobble surfaces. Equivalent doses in well-bleached cobble surface slices (i.e.