Nyasasaurus (meaning "Lake Nyasa lizard") is an extinct genus of avemetatarsalian archosaur from the putatively Middle Triassic Manda Formation of Tanzania that may be the earliest known dinosaur. The type species Nyasasaurus parringtoni was first described in 1956 in the doctoral thesis of English paleontologist Alan J. Charig, but it was not formally described until 2013. Previously, the oldest record of dinosaurs was from Brazil and Argentina and dated back to the mid-late Carnian stage, about 233.23 to 231.4 million years ago. Nyasasaurus comes from a deposit conventionally considered Anisian in age, meaning that it would predate other early dinosaurs by about 12 million years. Some studies cast doubt on this age, suggesting that the deposits may actually be Carnian in age, which would considerably reduce this temporal gap. However, this claim has been heavily disputed, and more accurate dating methods are needed to resolve the debate.
History of study
In the 1930s, the holotype of Nyasasaurus was collected in Parrington's locality B36 from the Lifua Member of the Manda Formation, Ruhuhu Basin near Lake Nyasa in southern Tanzania by Francis Rex Parrington. Other fossils from the same locality included those of cynodonts, dicynodonts, and rhynchosaurs. Most, including those of Nyasasaurus, consist only of fragments of bone. The remains were first described in English paleontologist Alan J. Charig's 1956 doctoral thesis and referred to as "Specimen 50b". In 1967 Charig used the name "Nyasasaurus cromptoni", in a review of Archosauria, but without any description, so it was commonly considered a nomen nudum; the dissertation was also never published. The generic name referred to Lake Nyasa and the specific name honouring Alfred Crompton. In 2013 a new description was published by Sterling Nesbitt, Paul Barrett, Sarah Werning and Christian Sidor, including the late Charig as posthumous co-author, ensuring the validity of the name Nyasasaurus, though the specific name was changed to parringtoni, in honour of Parrington. The generic name is occasionally misspelled as "Nyasaurus", as by Theodore Elmer White in 1973. The referred specimen of Nyasasaurus, SAM-PK-K10654, was collected by G. M. Stockley in the early 1930s in the western portion of the Manda Formation at Stockley's locality B27. This locality is listed as a locality from the "Upper Bone Bed" of the Manda Formation (currently understood to be from the Lifua Member) by Haughton (1932). The specimen was collected under a single field number, S507, presumably from a small area. The specimen was probably associated as evidenced by the bone quality, color and surrounding matrix (dark gray to black carbonate). The consistent sizes of the remains indicate that they probably represent a single individual. Stockley's locality B27 is located near the village of Gingama and it was probably the only specimen found at this locality, although a nearby locality B26, also listed as Gingama, produced cynodonts, lungfish, amphibians, and a shark. Dicynodonts, cynodonts and archosaurs such as Asilisaurus were also found nearby in the Lifua Member. The name Thecodontosaurus alophos was coined for this specimen by Haughton (1932). Its holotype consists of three cervical vertebrae and two middle to posterior dorsal vertebrae that are poorly preserved as they are highly fractured and parts of the bone and bone surfaces are eroded. Originally, a comparison of Thecodontosaurus alophos was made only with Coelophysis longicollis. Since then, the species has been largely ignored by all subsequent vertebrate workers and no formal diagnosis of the specimen was ever provided. Nesbitt et al. (2013) found the specimen to not be diagnostic because it does not have any autapomorphic features or a unique combination of characteristics. Therefore, they suggested to abandon the name Thecodontosaurus alophos and to refer its specimen to Nyasasaurus parringtoni.
Description The type specimen, NHMUK PV R 6856, is a partial skeleton belonging to an individual estimated to have been two to three metres in length. It consists of a right humerus, three partial sacral vertebrae and three presacral vertebrae. A second specimen, SAM-PK-K10654 consisting of three cervical vertebrae and two posterior presacral vertebrae, is also known. It was attributed to the same species as NHMUK R6856 because the dorsal or back vertebrae of the two specimens are nearly identical. However, the vertebral features that link NHMUK PV R 6856 and SAM-PK-K10654, including a connection between two bony projections called the hyposphene and hypantrum, are also found in other Triassic archosaurs. Since these characteristics are not unique to the two species they do not by themselves provide sufficient evidence for grouping NHMUK PV R 6856 and SAM-PK-K10654 under the same species. The 2013 description of Nyasasaurus by Sterling Nesbitt, Paul Barrett, Sarah Werning and Christian Sidor used a second line of evidence, the similar positions of the two specimens on the evolutionary tree, to justify their placement as the same species. The study also mentioned the similarity between the presacral vertebrae of both specimens of Nyasasaurus parringtoni and those of the enigmatic avemetatarsalian archosaur, Teleocrater rhadinus. Additionally, the anterior cervical vertebra attributed to NHMUK PV R 6795 is extremely elongated relative to that of the middle dorsal vertebrae with a low centrum to neural arch ratio and a significant displacement between the two sides of the articular facet of the centrum. However, it is probable that the limb bones and other elements included in NHMUK PV R 6795 do not belong to the same individual. Therefore, it is possible that the vertebrae of Teleocrater rhadinus are also referable to Nyasasaurus parringtoni. An analysis of the interior structure of the humerus indicates that bone growth was rapid, with interwoven bone fibers, many channels for blood vessels that radiate in all directions, and few lines of arrested growth. This structure more closely matches that of the early dinosaur Coelophysis than it does of dinosaur ancestors, suggesting that Nyasasaurus was closer to the ancestry of dinosaurs than other archosaurs at the time.
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