Bailey Mark Weiss

University of the Witwatersrand | wits · Evolutionary Studies Institute

Orthosuchus stormbergi was a small‐bodied crocodyliform, representative of a diverse assemblage of Early Jurassic, early branching crocodylomorph taxa from the upper Elliot Formation of South Africa. The life history of these early branching taxa remains poorly understood, with only sparse investigations into their osteohistology, yet species like...

Crocodilians grow slowly and have low metabolic rates similar to other living reptiles, but palaeohistology indicates that they evolved from an ancestor with higher growth rates.1,2,3,4,5 It remains unclear when slow growth appeared in the clade due to the sparse data on key divergences among early Mesozoic members of their stem lineage. We present...

Theropod dinosaurs likely radiated in the wake of the End-Triassic Extinction, but the early history of their diversification remains obscure. The Elliot Formation (EF) and its lateral equivalents in southern Africa preserves abundant continental Late Triassic and Early Jurassic vertebrate fossils, representing an opportunity to study the early pha...