期刊
NATURE
卷 544, 期 7651, 页码 484-+出版社
NATURE PUBLISHING GROUP
DOI: 10.1038/nature22037
关键词
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资金
- National Geographic Society Research Exploration [9606-14]
- National Science Foundation [EAR-1337569, EAR-1337291]
- Marie Curie Career Integration Grant [630123]
- National Geographic Society Young Explorers grant [9467-14]
- Russian Government Program of Competitive Growth of Kazan Federal University
- RFBR [14-04-00185, 17-04-00410]
- Directorate For Geosciences
- Division Of Earth Sciences [1337569] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
- Division Of Earth Sciences
- Directorate For Geosciences [1337291] Funding Source: National Science Foundation
The relationship between dinosaurs and other reptiles is well established(1-4), but the sequence of acquisition of dinosaurian features has been obscured by the scarcity of fossils with transitional morphologies. The closest extinct relatives of dinosaurs either have highly derived morphologies(5-7) or are known from poorly preserved(8,9) or incomplete material(10,11). Here we describe one of the stratigraphically lowest and phylogenetically earliest members of the avian stem lineage (Avemetatarsalia), Teleocrater rhadinus gen. et sp. nov., from the Middle Triassic epoch. The anatomy of T. rhadinus provides key information that unites several enigmatic taxa from across Pangaea into a previously unrecognized clade, Aphanosauria. This clade is the sister taxon of Ornithodira (pterosaurs and birds) and shortens the ghost lineage inferred at the base of Avemetatarsalia. We demonstrate that several anatomical features long thought to characterize Dinosauria and dinosauriforms evolved much earlier, soon after the bird-crocodylian split, and that the earliest avemetatarsalians retained the crocodylian-like ankle morphology and hindlimb proportions of stem archosaurs and early pseudosuchians. Early avemetatarsalians were substantially more species-rich, widely geographically distributed and morphologically diverse than previously recognized. Moreover, several early dinosauromorphs that were previously used as models to understand dinosaur origins may represent specialized forms rather than the ancestral avemetatarsalian morphology.
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