Captorhinid reptiles from the lower Permian Pedra de Fogo Formation, Piauí, Brazil: the earliest herbivorous tetrapods in Gondwana

Juan C Cisneros; Kenneth Angielczyk; Christian F Kammerer; Roger M H Smith; Jörg Fröbisch; Claudia A Marsicano; Martha Richter

doi:10.7717/peerj.8719

Captorhinid reptiles from the lower Permian Pedra de Fogo Formation, Piauí, Brazil: the earliest herbivorous tetrapods in Gondwana

PeerJ. 2020 Mar 6:8:e8719. doi: 10.7717/peerj.8719. eCollection 2020.

Authors

Juan C Cisneros¹, Kenneth Angielczyk², Christian F Kammerer³, Roger M H Smith^{4

5}, Jörg Fröbisch^{6

7}, Claudia A Marsicano⁸, Martha Richter⁹

Affiliations

¹ Museu de Arqueologia e Paleontologia, Universidade Federal do Piauí, Teresina, Piauí, Brazil.
² Negaunee Integrative Research Center, Field Museum of Natural History, Chicago, IL, USA.
³ North Carolina Museum of Natural Sciences, Raleigh, NC, USA.
⁴ Department of Karoo Palaeontology, Iziko South African Museum, Cape Town, Western Cape, South Africa.
⁵ Evolutionary Studies Institute, University of Witwatersrand, Johannesburg, Gauteng, South Africa.
⁶ Museum für Naturkunde, Leibniz-Institut für Evolutions- und Biodiversitätsforschung, Berlin, Germany.
⁷ Institut für Biologie, Humboldt Universität Berlin, Berlin, Germany.
⁸ Departamento de Ciencias Geológicas, FCEN, IDEAN-CONICET, Universidad de Buenos Aires, Buenos Aires, Argentina.
⁹ Earth Sciences Department, Natural History Museum, London, UK.

Abstract

The Pedra de Fogo Formation in the Parnaíba Basin of northeastern Brazil hosts a recently discovered lacustrine fauna and provides the only known record of the Captorhinidae in South America. Here, new captorhinid remains from this unit are described. Two partial mandibles, including one formerly ascribed to the genus Captorhinus, are here referred to Captorhinikos sp. a genus previously described from North America. The natural mould of a large mandible probably represents a new taxon within the captorhinid subclade Moradisaurinae, and a small skull roof is regarded as Captorhinidae indet. Captorhinids are generally considered to have been herbivores or omnivores. The Pedra de Fogo captorhinids likely played an important ecological role as primary consumers in the palaeoenvironment of this geological unit, which is also known for its extensive record of petrified forests. The new finds reinforce the close relationships between the continental faunas of palaeotropical western Gondwana and palaeoequatorial North America during the Cisuralian.

Keywords: Captorhinidae; Cisuralian; Gondwana; Herbivory; Parnaíba basin; Permian; Reptilia; South America.

Grants and funding

Fieldwork and subsequent research were funded by CNPq grants (456608/2014-1 and 305688/2016-2), the National Geographic Society Committee for Research and Exploration (9601-14), The Negaunee Foundation, The Grainger Foundation, the Field Museum of Natural History Earth Sciences Division, The African Origins Platform of the South African National Research Foundation, a Sofja Kovalevskaja Award of the Alexander von Humboldt Foundation, and the NHMUK’s Earth Sciences Department Investment Fund. The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.