Michelle R. Stocker

• PhD
• Professor (Assistant) at Virginia Tech

Fossils of embryonic and hatchling individuals can provide invaluable insight into the evolution of prenatal morphologies, heterochronies, and allometric trajectories within Archosauria but are exceptionally rare in the Triassic fossil record, obscuring a critical aspect of archosaurian biology during their evolutionary origins. Microvertebrate sam...

A newly referred specimen of Coahomasuchus kahleorum (TMM 31100‐437) from the lower part of the Upper Triassic Dockum Group of Texas preserves much of the skeleton including the majority of the skull. Introduced in the literature in the 1980s as the “carnivorous aetosaur”, TMM 31100‐437 bears recurved teeth that previously were considered unique am...

Reptile feeding strategies encompass a wide variety of diets and accompanying diversity in methods for subduing prey. One such strategy, the use of venom for prey capture, is found in living reptile clades like helodermatid (beaded) lizards and some groups of snakes, and venom secreting glands are also present in some monitor lizards and iguanians....

The anatomy of the braincase and associated soft tissues of the lagerpetid Dromomeron gregorii (Archosauria: Avemetatarsalia) from the Late Triassic of the United States is here described. This corresponds to the first detailed description of cranial materials of Lagerpetidae, an enigmatic group of Late Triassic (c. 236–200 Million years ago) anima...

Dinosaurs and pterosaurs have remarkable diversity and disparity through most of the Mesozoic Era1–3. Soon after their origins, these reptiles diversified into a number of long-lived lineages, evolved unprecedented ecologies (for example, flying, large herbivorous forms) and spread across Pangaea4,5. Recent discoveries of dinosaur and pterosaur pre...

Documenting evidence of feeding behavior in extinct vertebrates is crucial to understanding trophic structure and stability of ecosystems over periods of Earth's history. Direct evidence of trophic interactions in the fossil record is rare, but proxies like dental microwear enable testable hypotheses of feeding behavior in extinct taxa. Here we pre...

The femora of diapsids have undergone morphological changes related to shifts in postural and locomotor modes, such as the transition from plesiomorphic amniote and diapsid taxa to the apomorphic conditions related to a more erect posture within Archosauriformes. One remarkable clade of Triassic diapsids is the chameleon-like Drepanosauromorpha. Th...

Living amphibians (Lissamphibia) include frogs and salamanders (Batrachia) and the limbless worm-like caecilians (Gymnophiona). The estimated Palaeozoic era gymnophionan–batrachian molecular divergence¹ suggests a major gap in the record of crown lissamphibians prior to their earliest fossil occurrences in the Triassic period2–6. Recent studies fin...

Archosauriformes is a very diverse group of reptiles, that includes the clade Archosauria –the ruling reptiles–represented by Pseudosuchia (crocodylians) and Avemetatarsalia (birds). During the Triassic Period, pseudosuchians, in particular, are represented by an enormous diversity of body forms, sizes, and life habits that mainly dominated the con...

Non-archosaur archosauromorphs are a paraphyletic group of diapsid reptiles that were important members of global Middle and Late Triassic continental ecosystems. Included in this group are the azendohsaurids, a clade of allokotosaurians (kuehneosaurids and Azendohsauridae + Trilophosauridae) that retain the plesiomorphic archosauromorph postcrania...

A snake‐like body plan and burrowing lifestyle characterize numerous vertebrate groups as a result of convergent evolution. One such group is the amphisbaenians, a clade of limbless, fossorial lizards that exhibit head‐first burrowing behavior. Correlated with this behavior, amphisbaenian skulls are more rigid and coossified than those of non‐burro...

Archosauromorph reptiles underwent rapid lineage diversification, increases in morphological and body size disparity, and expansion into new adaptive landscapes. Several of the primary early archosauromorph clades (e.g. rhynchosaurs) are easy to differentiate from others because of their characteristic body types, whereas the more lizard‐like and c...

Once known solely from dental material and thought to represent an early ornithischian dinosaur, the early‐diverging pseudosuchian Revueltosaurus callenderi is described from a minimum of 12 skeletons from a monodominant bonebed in the upper part of the Chinle Formation of Arizona. This material includes nearly the entire skeleton and possesses a c...

The Placerias/Downs’ Quarry complex in eastern Arizona, USA, is the most diverse Upper Triassic vertebrate locality known. We report a new short-faced archosauriform, Syntomiprosopus sucherorum gen. et sp. nov., represented by four incomplete mandibles, that expands that diversity with a morphology unique among Late Triassic archosauriforms. The mo...

Temnospondyl specimens collected recently in the Middle-?Late Triassic of the Ruhuhu (Tanzania) and Luangwa (Zambia) rift basins are described and figured. They are attributed to cf. Cherninia megarhina (Chernin & Cosgriff, 1975), Mastodonsauroidea indet., Stereospondyli indet., and cf. Stereospondyli, as well as intercentra of small adult individu...

Synopsis Dietary requirements and acquisition strategies change throughout ontogeny across various clades of tetrapods, including birds. For example, birds hatch with combinations of various behavioral, physiological, and morphological factors that place them on an altricial–precocial spectrum. Passeriformes (=songbirds) in particular, a family con...

Living archosaurs (birds and crocodylians) have disparate locomotor strategies that evolved since their divergence ∼250 mya. Little is known about the early evolution of the sensory structures that are coupled with these changes, mostly due to limited sampling of early fossils on key stem lineages. In particular, the morphology of the semicircular...

Synopsis Pygopodids are elongate, functionally limbless geckos found throughout Australia. The clade presents low taxonomic diversity (∼45 spp.), but a variety of cranial morphologies, habitat use, and locomotor abilities that vary between and within genera. In order to assess potential relationships between cranial morphology and ecology, computed...

Morphology forms the most fundamental level of data in vertebrate palaeontology because it is through interpretations of morphology that taxa are identified, creating the basis for broad evolutionary and palaeobiological hypotheses. Assessing maturity is one of the most basic aspects of morphological interpretation and provides the means to study t...

The radiation of archosauromorph reptiles in the Triassic Period produced an unprecedented collection of diverse and disparate forms with a mix of varied ecologies and body sizes. Some of these forms were completely unique to the Triassic, whereas others were converged on by later members of Archosauromorpha. One of the most striking examples of th...

Dramatic early Cenozoic climatic shifts resulted in faunal reorganization on a global scale. Among vertebrates, multiple groups of mammals (e.g., adapiform and omomyiform primates, mesonychids, taeniodonts, dichobunid artiodactyls) are well known from the Western Interior of North America in the warm, greenhouse conditions of the early Eocene, but...

Pterosaurs were the first vertebrates to evolve powered flight¹ and comprised one of the main evolutionary radiations in terrestrial ecosystems of the Mesozoic era (approximately 252–66 million years ago), but their origin has remained an unresolved enigma in palaeontology since the nineteenth century2–4. These flying reptiles have been hypothesize...

The Lamy Quarry (= the Gunter bonebed) is known for its extensive accumulation of temnospondyl skulls and skeletons from the Norian (Upper Triassic) Garita Creek Formation, south of Lamy, New Mexico. Although the quarry is monodominant for metoposaurids, reptile fossils are also present. The reptile material, briefly described and identified to lea...

The strata of the American Southwest, particularly the Chinle Formation and the Dockum Group, are critical to our understanding of faunal diversity and evolution in the Late Triassic. In recent decades, these strata have informed the evolution of close dinosaur relatives, which remain poorly sampled and enigmatic in their geographic distribution. H...

The Triassic Period (252–201.5 Ma) records a great expansion of saurian diversity and disparity, particularly in skull morphology. Stem archosaurs exhibit substantial cranial disparity, especially by taxa either shortening or elongating the skull. This disparity is exemplified in the North American Late Triassic proterochampsians by the ‘short-face...

Allokotosauria, including Trilophosauridae and Azendohsauridae, is an extinct archosauromorph group that reached a near-Pangean distribution in the Middle Triassic to Late Triassic and evolved a broad range of cranial and dental morphologies. Within the Chinle Formation of western North America, allokotosaurs span the Norian-aged Blue Mesa Member (...

A complex pelvic morphology has been discovered in the fossils of one of the largest crocodylians.

Crown-group frogs (Anura) originated over 200 Ma according to molecular phylogenetic analyses, though only a few fossils from high latitudes chronicle the first approximately 60 Myr of frog evolution and distribution. We report fossils that represent both the first Late Triassic and the earliest equatorial record of Salientia, the group that includ...

Complete version of this abstract online at: https://gsa.confex.com/gsa/2019AM/webprogram/Paper339845.html The Placerias/Downs quarry (PDQ) complex in east-central Arizona is the most diverse Late Triassic nonmarine vertebrate locality in the world, yielding dozens of taxa since the first excavations in the 1930s. The PDQ is low in the Chinle and...

The evolution of the braincase and brain of early pseudosuchians through to the earliest crocodylomorphs is poorly understood given the paucity of specimens, lack of well-preserved material, and lack of consensus on the phylogenetic relationships of the major clades of Pseudosuchia. Here, we describe three differently sized braincases diagnosable a...

This corrects the article DOI: 10.1038/srep46028.

Hypotheses of feeding behaviors and community structure are testable with rare direct evidence of trophic interactions in the fossil record (e.g., bite marks). We present evidence of four predation, scavenging, and/or interspecific fighting events involving two large paracrocodylomorphs (= ‘rauisuchians’) from the Upper Triassic Chinle Formation (~...

The examination of endocranial data of archosauriforms has led to advances on the evolution of body size, nerve pathways, and sensory abilities. However, much of that research has focused on bird-line archosaurs, resulting in a skewed view of Archosauria. Phytosauria, a hypothesized sister taxon to or early-branching member of Archosauria, provides...

The sacrum – consisting of those vertebrae that articulate with the ilia – is the exclusive skeletal connection between the hindlimbs and axial skeleton in tetrapods. Therefore, the morphology of this portion of the vertebral column plays a major role in the evolution of terrestrial locomotion. Whereas most extant reptiles only possess the two ples...

The relationship between dinosaurs and other reptiles is well established, 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 or are known from poorly preserved or incomplete material....

Following the end-Permian extinction, terrestrial vertebrate diversity recovered by the Middle Triassic, and that diversity was now dominated by reptiles. However, those reptilian clades, including archosaurs and their closest relatives, are not commonly found until ~30 million years post-extinction in Late Triassic deposits despite time-calibrated...

Reptiles have a long history of transitioning from terrestrial to semi-aquatic or aquatic environments that stretches back at least 250 million years. Within Archosauria, both living crocodylians and birds have semi-aquatic members. Closer to the root of Archosauria and within the closest relatives of the clade, there is a growing body of evidence...

Summary Similarities in body plan evolution, such as wings in pterosaurs, birds, and bats or limblessness in snakes and amphisbaenians, can be recognized as classical examples of convergence among animals [1–3]. We introduce a new Triassic stem archosaur that is unexpectedly and remarkably convergent with the "dome-headed" pachycephalosaur dinosaur...

Rauisuchids are large (2?6 m in length), carnivorous, and quadrupedal pseudosuchian archosaurs closely related to crocodylomorphs. Though geographically widespread, fossils of this clade are relatively rare in Late Triassic assemblages. The middle Norian (?212 Ma) Hayden Quarry of northern New Mexico, USA, in the Petrified Forest Member of the Chin...

Selected measurements for Vivaron haydeni. Selected measurements in cm unless otherwise specified.

Phylogenetic matrix. Conducted using PAUP* version 4.0b10.

Phylogenetic analysis results as .tre files. including the strict consensus, analysis without the ilia of Rauisuchus, analysis without Teratosaurus, and analysis without the referred material of Vivaron.

The shift to a cooler and drier climate through the Paleogene has been interpreted as the driver for changes in diversity and biogeographic distributions among mammalian taxa during the Eocene, leading to hypotheses of continued tropical climatic refugia in West Texas through the middle and late Eocene. However, the presence of ectothermic reptiles...

The neotype skull of the Indian phytosaur Parasuchus hislopi Lydekker, 1885 (ISI R42) is re-evaluated and compared with the type material of other basal phytosaurs. Parasuchus hislopi is extremely similar to species previously placed in Paleorhinus (P. bransoni and P. angustifrons), sharing with them such characters as a series of nodes on the late...

Hypotheses of feeding behaviors and community structure are testable with rare direct evidence of trophic interactions in the fossil record (e.g., bite marks). We present evidence of four predation, scavenging, and/or interspecific fighting events involving two large paracrocodylomorphs (='rauisuchians') from the Upper Triassic Chinle Formation (∼2...

Phytosaurs are a diverse and morphologically distinctive clade of superficially crocodile-like archosauriforms that had a near global distribution during the Late Triassic. Because their remains are among the most abundant vertebrate remains recovered in many Upper Triassic terrestrial formations, phytosaurs are used extensively in long-range bioch...

The paraphyletic genus ‘Paleorhinus’ is understood currently as a cosmopolitan phytosaur taxon from the Late Triassic. There is no consensus regarding the number of species of ‘Paleorhinus,’ with multiple species and genera synonymised into a single genus or even a single species at various points in its published history. The taxonomy is confounde...

Phytosauria is a nearly cosmopolitan clade of large, quadrupedal, carnivorous archosauriforms. They are known unambiguously from Late Triassic deposits, although the clade's ghost lineage extends at least to the late Early Triassic. Their nares are uniquely located close to the orbits rather than anteriorly in the rostrum as in modern crocodylians,...

The Post Quarry, within the lower part of the type section of the Upper Triassic Cooper Canyon Formation in southern Garza County, western Texas, contains a remarkably diverse vertebrate assemblage. The Post Quarry has produced: the small temnospondyl Rileymillerus cosgriffi; the metoposaurid Apachesaurus gregorii; possible dicynodonts and eucynodo...

Preface: Festschrift for Wann Langston, Jr. - Volume 103 Issue 3-4 - Christopher J. Bell, Michelle R. Stocker, William G. Parker

A new phytosaur taxon from Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona, is here described based on cranial material from a single individual. This specimen previously was included in an extensive phylogenetic analysis, and it was found to possess a combination of character states that differs from all known phytosaur taxa in addition to two autapomorph...

Leptosuchus Case, 1922 (Reptilia: Phytosauria) from the Late Triassic of the American West is represented by many specimens. Here, I present complete morphological descriptions of the skull material of a new taxon from the Sonsela Member (Chinle Formation) of Petrified Forest National Park, Arizona, with the first rigorous phylogenetic analysis foc...

Vancleavea campi Long & Murry, 1995, from the Late Triassic of western North America, represents the latest surviving non-archosaurian archosauriform known to date. We present here a detailed comparative description based on a nearly complete, articulated skeleton from the Coelophysis Quarry in north-central New Mexico and other fragmentary specime...

A small aetosaur skeleton collected in 1939 from the Tecovas Formation of Texas and assigned to Desmatosuchus is reassigned to a new taxon, Sierritasuchus macalpini. Phylogenetic analysis suggests that Sierritasuchus is a member of the Desmatosuchinae. It can be distinguished from other desmatosuchines by two autapomorphies: (1) recurved spines on...