New information on the early Permian lanthanosuchoid Feeserpeton oklahomensis based on computed tomography

Mark J MacDougall; Anika Winge; Jasper Ponstein; Maren Jansen; Robert R Reisz; Jörg Fröbisch

doi:10.7717/peerj.7753

New information on the early Permian lanthanosuchoid Feeserpeton oklahomensis based on computed tomography

PeerJ. 2019 Oct 31:7:e7753. doi: 10.7717/peerj.7753. eCollection 2019.

Authors

Mark J MacDougall¹, Anika Winge¹, Jasper Ponstein¹, Maren Jansen^{1

2}, Robert R Reisz³, Jörg Fröbisch^{1

4}

Affiliations

¹ Museum für Naturkunde Leibniz-Institute für Evolutions- und Biodiversitätsforschung, Berlin, Germany.
² Museum für Naturkunde Magdeburg, Magdeburg, Germany.
³ University of Toronto Mississauga, Mississauga, ON, Canada.
⁴ Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin, Berlin, Germany.

Abstract

The cave deposits of the Lower Permian Richards Spur locality in Oklahoma, USA, have produced an incredible number of terrestrial tetrapod taxa, many of which are currently only known from this locality. One of the many recent taxa to be described from the locality was the small lanthanosuchoid parareptile Feeserpeton oklahomensis. Represented by a well-preserved, near complete skull, F. oklahomensis would have been a small predatory reptile, likely preying upon arthropods, and contributes to the extensive tetrapod fauna that was present at Richards Spur. New computed tomography data of the holotype and only specimen has allowed us to visualize and describe previously obscured and inaccessible anatomy of this taxon. These areas include the mandibular ramus, the palate, the sphenethmoid, the epipterygoids, and the braincase. Furthermore, this new anatomical information allowed formerly unknown character codings to be updated, thus we also performed new phylogenetic analyses that incorporated this new information. The results of these updated phylogenetic analyses are very similar to those of past studies, with F. oklahomensis being found as the sister taxon to all other lanthanosuchoids.

Keywords: Cisuralian; Palaeozoic; Parareptilia; Reptilia; Sauropsida.

Grants and funding

Mark J. MacDougall was supported by a Leibniz-DAAD postdoctoral scholarship and currently a Humboldt postdoctoral fellowship, Jasper Ponstein is supported by a Research Track Scholarship of the Humboldt-Universität zu Berlin within the Excellence initiative of the states and the federal government, Robert R. Reisz is supported by a National Science and Engineering Research Council (NSERC) Discovery grant, and Jörg Fröbsich is supported by the German Research Foundation (DFG). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.