Fossil specimen of the White Peach River Beast. (Courtesy of Liu Jun) Courtesy of Liu Jun Photo
Beijing, July 22 (Reporter Sun Zifa) Reporters learned from the Institute of Vertebrate Paleontology and Paleoanthropology of the Chinese Academy of Sciences (Institute of Paleovertebrates of the Chinese Academy of Sciences) on the 22nd that the research team of Liu Jun of the Institute found a new taxon of dipotaranes collected from the bottom of the Sunjiagou Formation in Yangquan, Shanxi Province, which was preserved at the bottom of the Sunjiagou Formation in Shanxi Province, and found a new taxon of dipotarans, and named it bai's Taohe beast according to the origin of the fossil and the discoverer. Phylogenetic analysis studies have shown that the White Peach River Beast and the two diodonates found in Laos, the dorsal order Ancient Nylonosaurus and the Strong Repelling Dragon, form a monophyletic taxonomy that is contained in a core diodontide.
Researcher Liu Jun pointed out in an interview with reporters on the same day that the new taxa of Bai's Taohe beast has the following characteristics that distinguish it from other genera species: the ventral surface of the plough bone is smooth, the lack of a pterygillonal keel process, the midplate of the wing bone is narrow, the tear bone is in contact with the septum jaw, the wing bone is not in contact with the maxilla, the occipital condyle is wide and curved, and the lateral tooth skeleton is thin, but there is a distinct dorsal ventral surface.
A schematic diagram of phylogeny shows the relationship between a branch of a core dipodont. Courtesy of Liu Jun
He said that previous research has led to two species of diplodonts in Laos as the most basic Ken's theropods, living in the Early Triassic (about 252 million to 250 million years ago), and the latest research results support that the diplodonts in Laos may have lived in the late Permian (252 million years ago) and migrated from the eastern edge of the South China Plate.
Liu Jun said that the study of Chinese Permian tetrapods has a long history, and a large number of diplodont fossils have been found in Xinjiang, and for a long time, no dipents have been found in the Permian strata widely exposed in North China, only a few fossils of serrated dragons. In 1989, the marginal Daqingshan beast was found in the Daqingshan Brain Baggou Group in Inner Mongolia, breaking this silence, but it was still not found in the more extensive Sunjiagou Group. In 2013, Bai Zhijun of Yangquan, Shanxi, found some tetrapod fossils in the Sunjiagou Formation, and more were found later. Its research team began to study the fossils at this site in 2018, and the fossil repair and research took a lot of time, and the latest research progress was obtained.
It is understood that the results of Liu Jun's research team on the research progress of several skull fossils that have been restored in the Sunjiagou Group have recently been published in the Journal of Paleontology and the Journal of Paleovertebrate Zoology. Among them, the "Journal of Paleontology" paper reported an incomplete skull, which was classified as the first representative of a branch of the cryptocephalus in China, and the paper in the Journal of Paleontology presented the discovery and research results of the Bai's Taohe beast. (End)
Source: China News Network