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Bernhard Peyer (1885–1963) was a prominent Swiss vertebrate palaeontologist and anatomist at the University of Zurich. In 1919, he discovered the occurrence of Middle Triassic (Anisian–Ladinian) ichthyosaurs, sauropterygians, and other reptiles at Monte San Giorgio on the border between Switzerland and Italy. Starting in 1924, Peyer, and later his student and successor Emil Kuhn-Schnyder, worked tirelessly to excavate and collect material from fossil-bearing deposits in this region. The discovery of an articulated skeleton of a long-necked reptile in 1929 allowed Peyer to solve the riddle of unusually elongate bones from the German Muschelkalk, which, he demonstrated, were cervical vertebrae of the extraordinarily long-necked reptile Tanystropheus. As a student in 1919 and later in 1942, Peyer explored a Rhaetian bonebed close to his native town of Schaffhausen. Processing the sediment, he recovered numerous small bones and teeth of vertebrates, among which teeth of diverse stem-mammals are of particular importance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Skeletal remains of archosauriform reptiles from the Lower and lower Middle Triassic Buntsandstein Group in the Central European Basin are rare. This paper reports on a partial, almost completely disarticulated skeleton of a previously unknown archosauriform reptile from the lower Middle Triassic (Anisian) Röt Formation of Rotfelden in Baden-Württemberg (Germany). Marcianosuchus angustifrons gen. et sp. nov. is distinguished by the following combination of features: posterodorsal process of premaxilla slender, slightly inclined posterodorsally, and with rounded apex; posterodorsal surface of frontal covered by slightly diverging, fine longitudinal grooves; squamosal with distinct lateral ridge extending for entire length of element; teeth with proportionately small, weakly recurved crowns; humerus considerably shorter than femur; distal shaft of ischium rod-like, not plate-like; pubis with flat distal portion forming ‘pubic apron’: neural spines of posterior cervical and anterior dorsal vertebrae with transversely greatly expanded apices that are Y-shaped in anterior or posterior view; dorsal vertebrae with centra taller dorsoventrally than long anteroposteriorly; dorsal osteoderms more or less rectangular in outline, longer anteroposteriorly than wide mediolaterally, with slightly rounded anterior and concave posterior margins and bearing dorsal ridge or eminence; and dorsal surfaces of osteoderms with unsculptured anterior region and posterior region bearing keel or eminence and covered by sculpturing of radially arranged grooves and pits. Marcianosuchus angustifrons represents the first definitive record of a non-archosaurian archosauriform from the Buntsandstein Group of Germany. Its body plan most closely resembles that of Euparkeria capensis among well-known non-archosaurian archosauriform reptiles, but the two taxa are clearly distinct. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Here, we report a new small-bodied reptile taxon, Idiosaura virginiensis gen. et sp. nov., from the Upper Triassic (Carnian) Vinita Formation of the Richmond basin (Newark Supergroup) in east-central Virginia, U.S.A. The material consists of a fragmentary dentary bearing numerous tall cylindrical teeth implanted in a pleurodont fashion into spongy alveolar tissue. Micro-CT scan data reveal an unusual and complex network of interconnected neurovascular canals within the dentary with connections to the alveolar tissue and pulp cavities of the teeth. The external anatomy of the dentary is consistent with that of Triassic kuehneosaurid reptiles, suggesting affinities to that group; the results of a phylogenetic analysis were inconclusive but do not exclude kuehneosaurid relationships. Alongside the recently described Micromenodon pitti (Rhynchocephalia) and Vinitasaura lizae (Lepidosauromorpha), the new taxon adds to the relatively diverse assemblage of small-bodied reptiles known from the Tomahawk microvertebrate bonebed (USNM locality 39981). Relative tooth complexities of I. virginiensis and V. lizae were analyzed using the Orientation Patch Count Rotated method, and results suggest that the rise of lepidosauromorph ecomorphologies specializing for feeding on invertebrates occurred in Triassic communities alongside non-lepidosauromorph taxa with similar mandibulo-dental features, as in kuehneosaurs. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]