Eleven new tracks from the Upper Jurassic of Portugal are described and attributed to the stegosaurian ichnogenus Deltapodus. One track exhibits exceptionally well−preserved impressions of skin on the plantar surface, showing the stegosaur foot to be covered by closely spaced skin tubercles of ca. 6 mm in size. The Deltapodus specimens from the Aalenian of England represent the oldest occurrence of stegosaurs and imply an earlier cladogenesis than is recognized in the body fossil record.
A partial plesiosauroid skull from the São Gião Formation (Toarcian, Lower Jurassic) of Alhadas, Portugal is re−evaluated and described as a new taxon, Lusonectes sauvagei gen. et sp. nov. It has a single autapomorphy, a broad triangular parasphenoid cultriform process that is as long as the posterior interpterygoid vacuities, and also a unique character combination, including a jugal that contacts the orbital margin, a distinct parasphenoid–basisphenoid suture exposed between the posterior interpterygoid vacuities, lack of an anterior interpterygoid vacuity, and striations on the ventral surface of the pterygoids. Phylogenetic analysis of Jurassic plesiosauroids places Lusonectes as outgroup to “microcleidid elasmosaurs”, equivalent to the clade Plesiosauridae. Lusonectes sauvagei is the only diagnostic plesiosaur from Portugal, and the westernmost occurrence of any plesiosaurian in Europe.
A new Late Cretaceous turtle, Angolachelys mbaxi gen. et sp. nov., from the Turonian (90 Mya) of Angola, represents the oldest eucryptodire from Africa. Phylogenetic analysis recovers Angolachelys mbaxi as the sister taxon of Sandownia harrisi from the Aptian of Isle of Wight, England. An unnamed turtle from the Albian Glen Rose Formation of Texas (USA) and the Kimmeridgian turtle Solnhofia parsonsi (Germany), are successively more distant sister taxa. Bootstrap analysis suggests those four taxa together form a previously unrecognized monophyletic clade of marine turtles, herein named Angolachelonia clade nov., supported by the following synapomorphies: mandibular articulation of quadrate aligned with or posterior to the occiput, and basisphenoid not visible or visibility greatly reduced in ventral view. Basal eucryptodires and angolachelonians originated in the northern hemisphere, thus Angolachelys represents one of the first marine amniote lineages to have invaded the South Atlantic after separation of Africa and South America.