page_title: Yarasuchus
section_title: Palaeoecology
hierarchical_section_title: Yarasuchus / Palaeoecology
caption_attribution_description: English: Life restoration of Pamelaria dolichotrachela. Based on figures in "Pamelaria dolichotrachela, a new prolacertid reptile from the Middle Triassic of India" by Kasturi Sen (Journal of Asian Earth Sciences 21(6): 663-681).
context_page_description: Yarasuchus is an extinct genus of avemetatarsalian archosaur that lived during the Anisian stage of the Middle Triassic of India. The genus was named and described in 2005 from a collection of disarticulated but fairly complete fossil material found from the Middle Triassic Yerrapalli Formation. The material is thought to be from two individuals, possibly three, with one being much more complete and articulated than the other. The type and only species is Y. deccanensis. Yarasuchus was a quadruped roughly 2–2.5 metres long, with an elongated neck and tall spines on its vertebrae. Unlike other quadrupedal Triassic reptiles, the limbs and shoulders of Yarasuchus were slender, and more like those of ornithodirans.
  Yarasuchus has had a complicated taxonomic history, after originally being described as a "prestosuchid rauisuchian", it was later variously recovered as a poposauroid pseudosuchian and a non-archosaurian archosauriform of unstable position. In 2017 it was determined to be related to the similarly enigmatic Triassic reptiles Teleocrater, Dongusuchus and Spondylosoma.
context_section_description: Many other vertebrate remains have been found from the Yerrapalli Formation alongside those of Yarasuchus, and would have coexisted with it during the Middle Triassic. Remains of the allokotosaur Pamelaria in particular have been found in close proximity to those of Yarasuchus. Other vertebrate remains include those of the lungfish Ceratodus, the actinopterygian fish Saurichthys, the temnospondyl Parotosuchus, the dicynodonts Rechnisaurus and Wadiasaurus, the rhynchosaur Mesodapedon, and a large undescribed erythrosuchid.
  The anatomical similarity between Yarasuchus and Teleocrater is mirrored by the similarities in fauna and environment shared between the Yerrapalli Formation and the Manda Formation in Tanzania, and both are estimated to be Anisian in age. At the time, India was still a part of the supercontinent Gondwana in Pangaea, and was located directly adjacent to East Africa. This demonstrates that early avemetatarsalians like Yarasuchus were geographically widespread in the Middle Triassic, as with other archosauriforms, in contrast to previous suggestions that pseudosuchians were more diverse. The close similarity between Yarasuchus and the Russian Dongusuchus further supports this, indicating biogeographical affinities between India and Russia despite their widely separated palaeolatitudes.
  The sediments of the Yerrapalli Formation are interpreted as fluvial deposits, indicative of a broad, interchannel floodplain environment with seasonal ephemeral stream channels. The climate is thought to have been hot and dry with seasonal rainfall. This is consistent with the preservation state of the fossils, as the remains of Yarasuchus were found dismembered and disarticulated, suggesting the material was left exposed at the surface for a period before being buried by suspended fluvial sediments. There are few plant fossils known from the Yerrapalli Formation, however this is not believed to be due to it being an arid environment, but rather due to the hot and dry conditions being unsuitable to the fossilisation of plant material.
caption: Restoration of the contemporary allokotosaur Pamelaria.
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