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BatmanelVisigodo

@batmanelvisigodo.bsky.social

#temnovember2025 day 25 :Buettnererpeton
Day 25 and now its time for #Buettnererpeton, a thin skull #metoposaur from the late #Triassic of northamerica
#Paleoart #sciart #amphibian #temnospondyl #metoposaurus

November 25, 2025 at 10:55 PM

Aaron Kufner

@akufner.bsky.social

Recent redescriptions of several metoposaurid taxa including Anaschisma browni (left) and Buettnererpeton bakeri (right) and character matrices attempting to discern metoposaurids relationships made this work reasonably straightforward.

Holotype of Anaschisma browni, redescribed by Gee, Parker, and Marsh (2020).

Holotype of Buettnererpeton bakeri redescribed by Gee and Kufner (2022).

September 23, 2026 at 9:07 PM

Bryan Gee

@koskinonodon.bsky.social

Some preprints: @akufner.bsky.social et al. (CC: @calamanderso.bsky.social @paleobadger.bsky.social) provided a taphonomic analysis of a monotaxic metoposaurid bonebed from Wyoming, the 1st documentation of Buettnererpeton bakeri in the Popo Agie Fm. [preprint, not accepted] doi.org/10.1101/2024...

Photographs of skulls of Buettnererpeton bakeri from the Late Triassic of Wyoming in dorsal and ventral views, along with interpretive line drawings. The skulls are a light brown-grey colour, with the typical ornamentation and deeply incised lateral line grooves of metoposaurids. The depicted specimens are nearly complete skulls. One preserves a covering of denticulate plates that would have covered the interpterygoid vacuities in life.

Comparison of the relative completeness of skeletons among three metoposaurid bonebeds: Elkins Place (type locality of Buettnererpeton bakeri in Texas), Site XIII (type locality of Dutuitosaurus ouazzoui in Morocco), and the newly described Nobby Knob site in Wyoming. The minimum number of individuals is used to calculate what percent of skeletons are complete with respect to different elements. The large, flat, ornamented elements (clavicle, interclavicle, skull) tend to be best represented, while oddly shaped elements like pelvic girdles, neural arches, and haemal arches, are not necessarily rarer in absolute count but are less-represented in terms of how many would be predicted to occur based on the minimum number of individuals (e.g., there should be dozens of neural arches in one individual compared to one interclavicle per individual).

January 3, 2025 at 3:24 PM

Bryan Gee

@koskinonodon.bsky.social

@akufner.bsky.social @calamanderso.bsky.social @paleobadger.bsky.social et al. analyzed a monotaxic bonebed of the metoposaurid Buettnererpeton bakeri from the Late Tr of Wyoming and provided taphonomic interpretations and comparisons. [preprinted last year]: doi.org/10.1371/jour...

Photographs and stratigraphic column showing the context of the Nobby Knob bonebed locality with different paleosol facies highlighted in the photographs, one of which contains the NK locality.

January 2, 2026 at 6:46 PM

Dave Lovelace

@paleobadger.bsky.social

Recent work (doi.org/10.1130/B368...) supports a Carnian to Carnian-Norian boundary age for classic lower Dockum Group Otis Chalk quarries whose fauna includes the theropod dinosaur *Lepidus*, aetosaurs, and allokotosaurs. Silesaurs, *Buettnererpeton bakeri*, and *Parasuchus*...(16/x)

From Lovelace et al., 2024: https://doi.org/10.1130/B36807.1 Figure 8. Hypothesized chronostratigraphic relations of Late Triassic rocks in the Mountain West and High Plains, USA. Blue asterisklaser ablation–inductively coupled plasma–mass spectrometry; red asterisk—chemical abrasion–thermal ionization mass spectrometry. Cnty—County; Mb.—Member; PEFO—Petrified Forest National Park; Fm.—Formation; SS—sandstone.

January 8, 2025 at 3:38 AM

Bryan Gee

@koskinonodon.bsky.social

Intro post: I'm best known online as a #paleontologist specializing in #temnospondyl #amphibians ☠️🐸, mainly Permian-Triassic of N America. I still do research on the side, but my day job is as a research data librarian @ UT Austin where I develop+promote best practices for sharing research data+code

Photograph of an Asian American male wearing a green shirt and baseball cap and holding a partial skull of a temnospondyl amphibian

Figure from a scientific paper (Gee et al., 2019) showing a digitally rendered skull of a trematopid temnospondyl from the Early Permian of Oklahoma. The top image shows the skull in 3D with cranial elements in different colors and a black slice through the mid-length which is shown as a 2D topographic slice highlighting internal features

Photograph from above of a man (me, on right) and a woman (Stephanie Abramowicz, on left) conducting mapping of a Jurassic sauropod bonebed in SE Utah. Stephanie is using a square meter grid to establish a physical grid on the quarry floor while I assist her with ensuring consistency between grids.

Photograph (left) and interpretive drawing (right) of the top of the skull of North American metoposaurid Buettnererpeton bakeri from the Late Triassic of Texas. The skull is flat, longer than wide, and with a parabolic rounded snout. The eyes are in the front half of the skull and widely separated. Small notches at the back would have been for the ear.

November 18, 2024 at 3:05 PM

Aaron Kufner

@akufner.bsky.social

Now for the critters! The star of the show is Buettnererpeton bakeri, a metoposaurid species placed in its own genus by @koskinonodon.bsky.social and me a couple years back. That little block with articulated palatal plates (E,F) was found by Bryan when he came out to the site in 2018!

11/16