Asilisaurus kongwe Nesbitt et al., 2010

Nesbitt, Sterling J., 2011, The Early Evolution Of Archosaurs: Relationships And The Origin Of Major Clades, Bulletin of the American Museum of Natural History 2011 (352), pp. 1-292 : 47

Asilisaurus kongwe Nesbitt et al., 2010

AGE: Late Anisian ( Hancox, 2000; Abdala and Allison, 2005).

OCCURRENCE: Lifua Member of the Manda Beds ( Catuneanu et al., 2005), Rahuhu Basin, Tanzania.

HOLOTYPE: NMT RB9, anterior portion of the dentary.

PARATYPES: NMT RB21, anterior cervical vertebra; NMT RB10, left scapulocoracoid; NMT RB11, sacrum; NMT RB12, proximal portion of an ischium; NMT RB13, ilium; NMT RB14, proximal portion of the pubis; NMT RB15, anterior portion of a skull; NMT RB16, proximal portion of the left humerus; NMT RB17, left astragalus; NMT RB18, right calcaneum; NMT RB19, proximal portion of a left femur; NMT RB20, right tibia. Additional material from the type locality referable to Asilisaurus is under preparation.

REMARKS: During a recent collection effort in the Manda Beds, the remains of a small dinosauriform were collected (Sidor et

al., 2008). The remains were locally abundant, and articulated segments and isolated bones were collected from a handful of localities over a 3 km 2 area. Fragments of the dentary and two complete astragali confirm a close relationship with Silesaurus , a non-dinosaurian dinosauriform. Asilisaurus kongwe represents the oldest avian-line archosaur yet discovered and shows that many of the basal avian-line archosaur clades were present by the end of the Anisian.

The taxon bears the following unique combination of characters: anterior portion of the dentary tapers to a sharp point, teeth absent from the anterior portion of the dentary, teeth ankylosed into the alveoli, distinctly convex dorsal margin of the dentary, Meckelian groove positioned at the dorsoventral midpoint of the medial surface of the dentary, peg-like teeth with extremely small, and poorly developed serrations.