Tangasauridae
Tangasauridae is an extinct family of diapsids known from fossils found in Late Permian to Early Triassic rocks in Madagascar, Kenya and Tanzania. Fossils have been found of members of this family in different stages of ontogenic development. Material from the early Triassic Middle Sakamena Formation of the Morondava Basin of Madagascar indicates that the Tangasauridae survived the Permian-Triassic extinction event.

V. Buffa, N.-E. Jalil, J. Falconnet & P. Vincent · CC BY 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- YounginoideaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota
Time the record covers
At most 13 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 259.857 Mya and 247 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
7 occurrences of Tangasauridae on record, most of them in the Early Triassic. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
7 occurrences- Permian29%
- Early Triassic71%
These are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
3 formations
- Middle Sakamena Formation · Sakamena Group4
- Maji-Ya-Chumvi Formation · Duruma Group1
- Lower Sakamena Formation · Sakamena Group1
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The named rock units Tangasauridae has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 1 occurrence has no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Tangasauridae and its relatives
Early TriassicWhere Tangasauridae and its relatives were recorded in the Early Triassic.
Found in the same rock
6 taxa- Barasaurus besairiei1 site
- Hovasaurus boulei1 site
- Kenyasaurus mariakaniensis1 site
- Reptilia1 site
- Tangasaurinae1 site
- Tangasaurus mennelli1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 3 sites for Tangasauridae, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
4 references- New reptile material from the Lower Triassic of Madagascar: implications for the Permian–Triassic extinction event4
- Kenyasaurus, a New Eosuchian Reptile from the Early Triassic of Kenya1
- Paleontologie de Madagascar, XIII. Amphibiens et reptiles permiens1
- On Reptilian Remains from the Karroo Beds of East Africa1
Each of the 7 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Tangasauridae
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- V. Buffa, N.-E. Jalil, J. Falconnet & P. Vincent
- Licence
- CC BY 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Tangasauridae was found in Smithsonian Open Access and Sketchfab.
MorphoSource was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itYounginoidea through timeFormations of the Early TriassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Haughton 1924