Genus
Valid Extinct

Nyasasaurus

Charig 1967
Etymology Nyasa lézard

Nyasasaurus is an extinct genus of avemetatarsalian archosaur from the putatively Middle Triassic Manda Formation of Tanzania that may be the earliest known dinosaur. The type species Nyasasaurus parringtoni was first described in 1956 in the doctoral thesis of English paleontologist Alan J. Charig, but it was not formally described until 2013.

Temporal range
Triassic
Jurassic
Cretaceous
Paleogene
Neogene
252 201 145 66 0 Ma
PBDB occurrences
2
Group
Dinosaures
Terrestrial
Nyasasaurus
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Rendition of possible appearance of the dinosaur genus Nyasasaurus from the Middle Triassic, possibly the earliest known dinosaur. Black portions represent the partial skeletal fragments (a humerus and six vertebrae) from one specimen blue portions represent fragments from a second specimen (three cervical vertebrae) on which the current likely form of the animal is based. © KDS444 · CC BY-SA 3.0 · Wikimedia
PBDB ↗ Wikipedia ↗
Classification
Dinosauria Unranked clade
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Nyasasaurus Genus
Fossil sites 2 geolocated sites
Distribution
Top countries
🇹🇿 Tanzania
2
Geological formations
Manda Beds
2
Temporal distribution
Anisian (246.7–241.464 Ma)
2
Species (3)
Nyasasaurus cromptoni
Nyasasaurus parringtoni 247 Ma
Thecodontosaurus alophos subjective synonym of Nyasasaurus parringtoni 247 Ma
Images 1
Bibliography
Original description
A. J. Charig. 1967. Archosauria. The Fossil Record: A Symposium with Documentation. Geological Society of London Special Publication 2:703-718
Bibliography (2)
S. J. Nesbitt, P. M. Barrett, and S. Werning, C. A. Sidor, A. J. Charig. 2013. The oldest dinosaur? A Middle Triassic dinosauriform from Tanzania. Biology Letters 9(1):1-5 DOI ↗
S. H. Haughton. 1932. On a collection of Karroo vertebrates from Tanganyika Territory. Quarterly Journal of the Geological Society of London 88(4):634-671 DOI ↗