The Zoological Journal has another new paper describing a Mazon Creek vertebrate.  This one is called Infernovenator steenae.  The paper is authored by Arjan Mann, Jason D Pardo, and Hillary C Maddin of the Department of Earth Sciences, Carleton University in Ottawa, Ontario, CA.  Earlier this year, Mann and Maddin published a description of a “microsaur” species named Diabloroter bolti.  As before, the sculpture in the picture was created by David Duck, who has been an ESCONI member.  Wow!  Congrats yet again!

The Carboniferous (Pennsylvanian; 309–307 Mya) ‘Mazon Creek’ Lagerstätte produces some of the earliest tetrapod fossils of major Paleozoic lineages. Previously, the Mazon Creek record of lysorophians was known from a single poorly preserved specimen consisting only of a partial vertebral column. Here we describe a new, virtually complete lysorophian genus and species, Infernovenator steenae gen. & sp. nov. on the basis of a unique combination of characters, including a near complete circumorbital series and the retention of a postfrontal. Parsimony-based phylogenetic analysis placed the new taxon in the family Molgophidae, as sister to Brachydectes newberryi. Those results and the more generalized cranial morphology present in Infernovenator further support a recumbirostran origin of Molgophidae. Co-occurrence of two morphologically and functionally distinct molgophids in the Early Moscovian suggests a rapid and underappreciated diversification of this family in the Early Pennsylvanian.