There are no Known Aetosaur Fossils from Madagascar!

I happened to click on the Wikipedia page for aetosaurs today. It is really shaping up as someone (or maybe a few people) is putting a lot of work into it. A few errors here and there and a couple taxonomic issues that will be addressed in some future publications (not all by me). However, the most glaring thing that caught my eye was location column for Desmatosuchus lists Madagascar (Isalo Group) as a unit containing fossils of Desmatosuchus. This is an occurrence I addressed in my M.S. thesis (Parker, 2003) and in my 2008 paper on the genus Desmatosuchus. It all stems from a problem in assigning a geological age to a fossil bearing horizon in the upper part of the Isalo II (part of the Isalo Group; Burmeister, 2000; Burmeister et al., 2006). This horizon includes fish fossils, as well as the remains of dinosaurs (sauropod, theropod) and other archosaurs, including teeth that are superficially similar to those of phytosaurs and a handful of osteoderms that belong to some type of pseudosuchian (see photo below from Burmeister, 2000).

Kurtis Burmeister first approached me in the late 1990s asking my opinion if these osteoderms could be from aetosaurs. I though the resemblance was purely superficial and despite he presence of an anterior bar and pitted ornamantation, the overall morphology and the lateral sutures were not typical of aetosaurs.  In his thesis, he suggested they could be crocodyliform (pers. comm. from Mike Parrish), but preliminarily assigned them to the Aetosauria and noted a possible assignment to Desmatosuchus. This identification was based on showing the osteoderms to another aetosaur "expert" (Burmeister, pers. comm.).

A few years later I was approached again by another member of the research team who showed me the specimens again.  This time I was with a small group of Triassic workers and coincidently we had a crocodyliform specialist with us as well.  We all agreed that they were definitely not Desmatosuchus, not aetosaurian, and most likely a crocodyliform. In a subsequent publication (Burmeister et al., 2006) they are refered to an indeterminate crocodylotarsian (pseudosuchian) and the superficial resemblance to aetosaurs is discussed, although the authors note the osteoderms probably represent a goniopholidid crocodyliform and that the horizon is probably Early Jurassic in age. Parker (2008) argued that they were not aetosaurian and possessed characters found in mesoeucrocodylians.

Despite all of this ambiguity, these specimens were explicitly assigned to the aetosaur Dematosuchus haplocerus by Lucas et al. (2003) and used to provide an Adamanian (late Carnian) age for these beds. This identification and correlation was followed by Lucas (2010).  Discussions with colleagues and the current Wikipedia entry for aetosaurs demonstrates that the identification of these specimens as aetosaurian is still misunderstood.  For the 4th time (and hopefully the last) I would like to propose my opinion (based on two personal observations of the material and the figure above) that these are not aetosaur plates and most certainly not referable to Desmatosuchus. The ornament is too deep and irregular, furhtermore, if these are fragments of paramedian plates then the ornament would be too large.  Finally, the sutural edges are completely different than anything found in aetosaurs, and certainly does not represent the "tongue-and-groove" articular surface found in desmatosuchines. There currently is no evidence for aetosaurs in the Isalo II and the age of the upper beds is most likely Jurassic (Burmeister et al., 2006; Parker, 2008) and not Adamanian in age (contra Lucas, 2010).

REFERENCES

Burmeister, K.C., 2000, Paleogeographic and biostratigraphic implications of new early Mesozoic terrestrial vertebrate fossils from the Poamay site: central Morondava Basin, Madagascar [M.A. thesis]: Santa Barbara, University of California, 109 p.

Burmeister, K.C., J.J. Flynn, J.M. Parrish, and A.R. Wyss. 2006. Paleogeographic and biostratigraphic implications of new early Mesozoic vertebrates from Poamay, central Morondava Basin, Madagascar. New Mexico Museum of Natural History Science Bulletin 37:457–475.

Lucas, S.G. 2010. The Triassic timescale based on nonmarine tetrapod biostratigraphy and biochronology; pp. 447-500 in  Lucas, S. G. (ed.) The Triassic Timescale. Geological Society, London, Special Publications, 334.

Lucas, S.G., K.E. Zeigler, A.B. Heckert, and A.P. Hunt. 2003. Upper Triassic stratigraphy and biostratigraphy, Chama Basin, north-central New Mexico. New Mexico Museum of Natural History & Science Bulletin 24:15–39.

Parker, W.G. 2003. Description of a new specimen of Desmatosuchus haplocerus from the Late Triassic of Northern Arizona. M.S. thesis. Northern Arizona University, Flagstaff, AZ.

Parker, W.G. 2008. Description of new material of the aetosaur Desmatosuchus spurensis (Archosauria: Suchia) from the Chinle Formation of Arizona and a revision of the genus Desmatosuchus. PaleoBios 28:1-40.