27-3 Two New Sets of Aetosauriform Dermal Armor Impressions from the New Haven Formation (Upper Triassic: Norian) of New Haven, Connecticut

Session: Recent Work in Mesozoic East Coast Rift Basins: Structure, Sedimentology, Paleontology, Mapping, and More!

Presenting Author:

Adé Ben-Salahuddin

Authors:

Ben-Salahuddin, Adé¹, Brinkman, Daniel Lee², Hyatt, James Andrew³

(1) Department of Biology, Southern Connecticut State University, New Haven, , (2) Division of Vertebrate Paleontology, Yale Peabody Museum, New Haven, , (3) Department of Environmental Earth Science, Eastern Connecticut State University, Willimantic, ,

Abstract:

We report on the 2013 discovery of two sets of aetosauriform dermal armor impressions in deposits of the New Haven Formation exposed at the former Freeman P. Clark Quarry in the Fair Haven Heights neighborhood of New Haven, Connecticut. Two slabs, each bearing a set of shallow (less than 1 cm deep) impressions, were cut from poorly sorted, matrix-supported conglomeratic boulders littering the floor of the now closed quarry by a team from the Yale Peabody Museum. Close manual examination of the slabs was complemented by high-resolution photography and photogrammetric modeling and analysis using the softwares Metashape Professional and CloudCompare, respectively; thus we identified features and obtained measurements that allowed us to assign each impression to a corresponding body region of a range of potential aetosauriform morphotypes. The impressions are of incomplete columns (three and four rows long) of small (3-5 cm wide) paramedian scutes from the trunk region; one set may also preserve impressions of two lateral scutes as well. Despite their discovery near the type locality of the aetosaur Stegomus arcuatus Marsh 1896, we refrain from assigning these new specimens to any particular genus or species due to their lack of diagnosable features and concerns about the taxonomic validity of S. arcuatus itself. The coarseness of the sediment in which all three specimens are preserved and the relatively poorer preservation quality of the new impressions suggest a very high-energy depositional paleoenvironment on an alluvial fan, which we are informally calling the “Quinnipiac Fan”. As the first fossils found in New Haven in over a century and only a few years after the Peabody's rediscovery of the quarry's location, we note the significance of this find amid increasing local interest in the area’s paleontological history in the hopes that this discovery may lead to future fruitful fossil expeditions within Quarry Park.

Geological Society of America Abstracts with Programs. Vol. 58, No. 2, 2026

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