A NEW TREMATOPID AMPHIBIAN FROM THE LOWER PERMIAN OF CENTRAL GERMANY

A new genus and species of trematopid amphibian, Tambachia trogallas, is described on the basis of the greater portion of a skeleton, includ ing the skull. The holotype was collected from the Early Permian Tamba ch Formation, the lowermost unit of the Upper Rotliegend, of the Broma cker locality in the midregion of the Thuringian Forest near Gotha, ce ntral Germany. Not only is this the first trematopid to be reported ou tside the United States, but it is the first specimen to include the g reater portion of the postcranial skeleton. Analysis of the interrelat ionships of the trematopids agrees with the results of other recent st udies: (1) Tambachia and the Late Pennsylvanian Anconastes, on the one hand, and the Early Permian Acheloma and Phonerpeton on the other, fo rm sister clades of the monophyletic Trematopidae; and (2) Actiobates, although almost certainly a trematopid, is too poorly known to determ ine its intrafamilial relationships. The Bromacker locality is the onl y Early Permian site in Europe to produce a diverse assemblage of terr estrial or semi-terrestrial tetrapods, several of which are known othe rwise only from the Upper Pennsylvanian and Lower Permian of the Unite d States. The Bromacker assemblage is, therefore, of great interest in indicating: (1) an earliest Permian Wolfcampian age for the Tambach F ormation, the basal unit of the Upper Rotliegend of the Thuringian For est. This in turn suggests a Late Pennsylvanian age for all or most of the underlying Lower Rotliegend, rather than the widely accepted Earl y Permian; (2) a cosmopolitan, Euramerican distribution of Early Permi an terrestrial or semi-terrestrial tetrapods previously reported only from the United States. This suggests an absence of any strong physica l barriers to tetrapod dispersal across Euramerica during the Early Pe rmian.