A triassic fauna from Madagascar, including early dinosaurs

The discovery of a Middle to Late Triassic (similar to 225 to 230 million y ears old) terrestrial vertebrate fauna from Madagascar is reported. This fa una documents a temporal interval not well represented by continental verte brate assemblages elsewhere in the world. It contains two new prosauropod d inosaurs, representing some of the earliest dinosaur occurrences known glob ally. This assemblage provides information about the poorly understood tran sition to the dinosaur-dominated faunas of the Latest Triassic.