The Luoping Fauna is a group of biological fossils preserved in the early Middle Triassic strata in the Luoping area of Yunnan, my country. Similar fossil assemblages are also found in Panxian, Guizhou, and are also called Panxian Fauna. For a long time, abundant marine life fossils have been found in the Luoping fauna, including a variety of reptiles, fish and invertebrates. Therefore, it is also regarded as a typical representative of the recovery of Triassic marine life after the Permian mass extinction. . The marine reptiles in the Luoping biota include rich species of ichthyosaurs, pterosaurs and protosaurs. Together with various companion animals, all fossil evidence here shows that the Luoping area was a warm and vast shallow sea 240 million years ago. environment. However, the latest discoveries suggest that there may be localized land here that we don't yet know about.
In the recently published JOURNAL OF PALEONTOLOGY, researchers from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology, Chinese Academy of Sciences, named a brand new protosaurus fossil. This small reptile about 30 centimeters in length has a slender body, well-developed limbs and The fine, comb-like teeth are called Pectodens zhenyuensis. The body structure indicates that it was an animal that lived on land, and the fossils show the typical characteristics of in-situ burial - complete natural connections. The researchers concluded that although the fossils were produced from strata that represented a marine environment and were associated with a variety of marine life, there must have been some size of prehistoric land near the site of origin.
Figure 1 Pectodens zhenyuensis (Photo provided by Li Chun)
animal tags： Triassic fossils ichthyosaurs pterosaurs
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