Best Triassic

Ryōsuke Motani is a paleontologist and professor at the University of California, Davis, specializing in the evolution and biomechanics of marine reptiles. His research combines approaches from physics, engineering, and paleontology to reconstruct how extinct marine creatures like ichthyosaurs funct...

Richard J. Butler is a British vertebrate paleontologist serving as a professor at the University of Birmingham. His academic research is primarily focused on the macroevolution, early origins, and diversification of archosaurs, specifically during the Triassic period. He is noted for his extensive...

Olivier Rieppel is a Swiss paleontologist who served as a curator at the Field Museum of Natural History in Chicago. His research specializes in vertebrate paleontology, specifically the evolution, phylogeny, and interrelationships of extinct marine reptiles. He is widely recognized for his extensiv...

Ischigualasto Provincial Park is a protected badlands landscape in San Juan Province, Argentina, noted for exposed rock sequences from the Triassic Period. Together with neighboring Talampaya National Park, it was inscribed on the UNESCO World Heritage List in 2000. Its sedimentary formations preser...

Paul E. Olsen is an American paleontologist and geologist who currently serves as a professor at Columbia University. He is noted for his extensive research on the Newark Supergroup, utilizing fossils and lake sediments to reconstruct Late Triassic and Early Jurassic ecosystems. His work heavily foc...

The Manicouagan Crater is a massive impact structure in Quebec, Canada dating back to the Triassic period. Its exceptional size—approximately 130 kilometers across—makes it one of the largest known impact craters on Earth. Scientists study it to understand ancient impacts and their effects on planet...

Talampaya National Park is a protected area in La Rioja Province, Argentina, characterized by red sandstone cliffs, broad canyons, and dry desert terrain. Together with neighboring Ischigualasto Provincial Park, it forms the Ischigualasto-Talampaya UNESCO World Heritage Site, inscribed in 2000. Its...

Valle de la Luna is a popular name for the eroded landscape of Ischigualasto Provincial Park in San Juan Province, Argentina. Its exposed gray and ochre sedimentary formations, isolated rock shapes, and sparse vegetation produce the moonlike appearance reflected in the name. The park forms part of t...

Friedrich von Huene was a German vertebrate paleontologist whose extensive 20th-century research addressed dinosaurs, early archosaurs, and other fossil reptiles. He described and classified numerous specimens, with particular attention to Triassic vertebrates and the evolutionary relationships of m...

Herrerasaurus ischigualastensis was a carnivorous dinosaur that lived during the Late Triassic, approximately 231 million years ago, in what is now northwestern Argentina. Fossils come from the Ischigualasto Formation and include relatively complete skeletons that reveal a lightly built, bipedal pre...

Eoraptor lunensis is a small early dinosaur from the Late Triassic Ischigualasto Formation of northwestern Argentina, dating to about 231 million years ago. The specimen catalogued as PVSJ 512 is the substantially complete skeleton used as the holotype when the species was described. Its mixture of...

Fabio Marco Dalla Vecchia is an Italian vertebrate paleontologist known for his extensive research on prehistoric reptiles. His primary area of expertise lies in the study of Triassic and Cretaceous pterosaurs, particularly those discovered in the Adriatic region and Italy. He has described and name...

Alexander Sharov was a Soviet paleontologist known for describing unusual Late Triassic reptiles, including Longisquama and the pterosaur Sordes.

Tanystropheus hydroides was a large marine or shoreline-dwelling archosauromorph from the Middle Triassic of Europe. Its exceptionally long neck consisted of only 13 greatly elongated vertebrae and accounted for roughly half of an adult's body length, which could approach six metres. Skull anatomy a...

Thrinaxodon liorhinus was a small cynodont synapsid from the Early Triassic, known principally from South Africa and Antarctica. Its skeleton combined reptile-like features with traits approaching those of mammals, including differentiated teeth and changes to the jaw and palate. Small pits and cana...

Morganucodon watsoni was a small, insect-eating mammaliaform that lived around the Triassic-Jurassic boundary and is particularly well represented by fossils from Wales. Its jaws show the mammalian dentary-squamosal joint while retaining small postdentary bones associated with the ancestral jaw arti...

Massospondylus carinatus is an early sauropodomorph dinosaur known from Early Jurassic rocks in southern Africa, especially South Africa and Lesotho. It had a long neck and tail, a relatively small head, grasping hands, and a body plan associated with the evolutionary lineage that later produced sau...

Cynognathus crateronotus was a large, predatory cynodont that lived during the Triassic Period and belonged to the synapsid lineage leading toward mammals. Fossils assigned to Cynognathus are particularly well known from South Africa, with related occurrences across parts of Gondwana, including Sout...

Elizabeth Nicholls was a Canadian paleontologist at the Royal Tyrrell Museum, noted for research on marine reptiles, especially Triassic ichthyosaurs.

Shonisaurus popularis is a large ichthyosaur from the Late Triassic Luning Formation of Nevada, United States, formally named in 1976. Adults reached approximately 15 meters in length and had an elongated body, long narrow flippers, and a skull proportionally smaller than those of many earlier ichth...

Silesaurus opolensis is a small dinosauriform archosaur from Late Triassic deposits near Opole in southern Poland. Described in 2003 from numerous associated skeletons, it had an elongated neck, a lightly built body, and a toothless beaklike tip at the front of the lower jaw. Its position close to D...

Eodromaeus murphi is a small, lightly built dinosaur from the Late Triassic Ischigualasto Formation of northwestern Argentina. Known from a substantially complete skeleton, it had sharp teeth, grasping forelimbs, and long hind limbs suited to bipedal movement. It was described as an early theropod,...

Michael J. Benton is a British paleontologist and professor of vertebrate paleontology at the University of Bristol. His research focuses on macroevolution, the evolutionary history of tetrapods, and major extinction events, particularly the Permian-Triassic mass extinction. He has authored numerous...

Eudimorphodon ranzii was an early pterosaur from the Late Triassic of what is now northern Italy. Described in 1973, it had a long tail, a relatively small wingspan, and an unusual dentition that included several kinds of teeth, with many bearing multiple cusps. The animal is important to studies of...

Asilisaurus kongwe was a small dinosauriform archosaur from the Middle Triassic Manda Beds of Tanzania, dating to roughly 243 million years ago. It belonged to Silesauridae, a group closely related to dinosaurs, but is not generally classified as a true dinosaur. Its age and anatomy show that close...

Nyasasaurus parringtoni is an extinct archosaur known from fragmentary Middle Triassic remains collected in Tanzania near Lake Nyasa, now called Lake Malawi. Its fossils, including a humerus and vertebrae, display anatomical features associated with dinosaurs and closely related dinosauriforms. At r...

Lagerpeton chanarensis is a small archosaur known from the Middle to Late Triassic Chanares Formation of Argentina. It belongs to Lagerpetidae, a group of lightly built avemetatarsalians closely related to pterosaurs within the broader lineage that also includes dinosaurs. Its elongated hind limbs a...

Li Chun is a Chinese vertebrate paleontologist known for research on Triassic marine reptiles, including the long-necked Dinocephalosaurus from China.

Late Triassic gliding reptile from Kyrgyzstan, unique among early gliders for having its wing membrane supported primarily by elongated hind limbs rather than forelimbs.