OWEN,RICHARD GIANT TRIASSIC FROGS - ARCHOSAURS FROM THE MIDDLE TRIASSIC OF ENGLAND

The first archosaurs from the Middle Triassic were described unwitting ly by Sir Richard Owen in the 1840s. He combined a variety of archosau rian postcranial elements with skull material of temnospondyls, thus p roducing his image of giant Triassic frogs. Archosaur bones have been collected from Middle Triassic (Anisian) sediments of Warwick and Brom sgrove in the West Midlands, and more recently, from south Devon. Some of the vertebrae and pelvic elements belong to the poposaurid Bromsgr oveia, and other elements and teeth to unidentified archosaurs, one pe rhaps a dinosaur. The English faunas help fill a gap in knowledge of a rchosaurs in the early part of the Middle Triassic. If Bromsgroveia is a poposaurid, it is the oldest member of a family known otherwise fro m the Late Triassic of North America.