LATE TRIASSIC CONTINENTAL TETRAPODS FROM THE 
NEWARK SUPERGROUP OF EASTERN NORTH AMERICA

	SUES, Hans-Dieter, Department of Palaeobiology, Royal 	
		Ontario  Museum, 100 Queen's Park, Toronto, Ontario 
		M5S 2C6, and  Department of Zoology, University of 
		Toronto, Toronto, Ontario M5S 3G5, Canada.     

The early Mesozoic synrift basins of the Newark Supergroup in 
eastern North America contain several thousand meters of Triassic 
fluvial and lacustrine sedimentary rocks.  These strata have 
traditionally been considered rather unfossiliferous except for locally 
abundant, mainly reptilian tracks and trackways.  However, more 
recent field-work has yielded skeletal remains of a series of 
assemblages of Late Triassic continental tetrapods. 
	A taxonomically diverse assemblage from the Richmond basin 
of Virginia is dominated by non-mammalian synapsids and may be 
slightly older stratigraphically than other Late Triassic occurrences of 
continental vertebrates in North America.  Assemblages of continental 
tetrapods are known from the Wolfville Formation of the Fundy basin 
of Nova Scotia, the Cumnock and Pekin formations of the Deep River 
basin in North Carolina, and the New Oxford Formation of the 
Gettysburg basin in Pennsylvania and represent a variety of 
depositional environments.  They share taxa with those from the 
richly fossiliferous Chinle-Dockum strata of the American Southwest 
and are considered late Carnian in age.  At present there exists only a 
rather poor record (in terms of both taxonomic diversity and number 
of skeletal remains) of Norian-age tetrapods from the Hartford and 
Newark basins of the northeastern United States and the Fundy basin 
of eastern Canada.