Mambawakale

Mambawakale is a genus of large sized basal paracrocodylomorph, possibly a poposauroid, from the Manda Beds of Tanzania. It was informally named Pallisteria before being officially published under its current name almost 60 years after its discovery. It contains a single species, Mambawakale ruhuhu.

==History and naming== thumb|Photos taken during an expedition to the Manda Beds in 1963|left In 1963, following the independence of Tanzania, Alan Charig participated in a joint expedition of the Natural History Museum, London and the University of London, as well as researchers from Uganda, South Africa and Edinburgh, to Tanzania and Zambia. The expedition heavily relied on the support of locals who had discovered the localities and fossils within them, although they went unnamed in the field notes. The fossils discovered in 1963 were collected and stored in the Natural History Museum of London. Among these fossils was the incomplete skull of a large crocodylomorph, noted for its large size and informally referred to as Pallisteria angustimentum (after Charig's friend John Weaver Pallister and the Latin words "angustus" and "mentum", meaning "narrow chin). Little information was given on Pallisteria, with neither details, figures or even a specimen number being noted down. The manuscript, although listed as "in press", was never published nor recovered from the archives, rendering Pallisteria (and the family Pallisteriidae) a nomen nudum. Following the formal description of Teleocrater, Mandasuchus, Hypselorhachis and Nyasasaurus, Pallisteria was the last of the significant fossil archosaurs reported by Charig to be formally published. A formal description of the holotype specimen (NHMUK R36620) was eventually published 59 years later in 2022 by Richard J. Butler and colleagues, who named it Mambawakale. In addition to the skull, Butler's team also described associated postcranial material mentioned in the field notes, including elements of the cervical series and a left manus.