Rhynchosauria
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Rhynchosauria
Rhynchosaurs are a group of extinct herbivorous Triassic archosauromorph reptiles, belonging to the order Rhynchosauria. Members of the group are distinguished by their triangular skulls and elongated, beak like premaxillary bones. Rhynchosaurs first appeared in the Middle Triassic or possibly the Early Triassic, before becoming abundant and globally distributed during the Carnian stage of the Late Triassic. Description Rhynchosaurs were herbivores, and at times abundant (in some fossil localities accounting for 40 to 60% of specimens found), with stocky bodies and a powerful beak. Early primitive forms, like ''Mesosuchus'' and '' Howesia'', were generally small and more typically lizard-like in build, and had skulls rather similar to the early diapsid ''Youngina'', except for the beak and a few other features. Later and more advanced genera grew to medium to medium large size, up to two meters in length. The skull in these forms were short, broad, and triangular, becoming muc ...
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Archosauromorpha
Archosauromorpha (Greek for "ruling lizard forms") is a clade of diapsid reptiles containing all reptiles more closely related to archosaurs (such as crocodilians and dinosaurs, including birds) rather than lepidosaurs (such as tuataras, lizards, and snakes). Archosauromorphs first appeared during the late Middle Permian or Late Permian, though they became much more common and diverse during the Triassic period. Although Archosauromorpha was first named in 1946, its membership did not become well-established until the 1980s. Currently Archosauromorpha encompasses four main groups of reptiles: the stocky, herbivorous allokotosaurs and rhynchosaurs, the hugely diverse Archosauriformes, and a polyphyletic grouping of various long-necked reptiles including ''Protorosaurus'', tanystropheids, and ''Prolacerta''. Other groups including pantestudines (turtles and their extinct relatives) and the semiaquatic choristoderes have also been placed in Archosauromorpha by some authors. A ...
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Eohyosaurus
''Eohyosaurus'' is an extinct genus of basal rhynchosaur known from the early Middle Triassic (early Anisian stage) Burgersdorp Formation of Free State, South Africa. It contains a single species, ''Eohyosaurus wolvaardti''. Discovery ''Eohyosaurus'' is known solely from the holotype SAM-PK-K10159, a partial skull missing the front end, with associated incomplete lower jaws currently housed at the Iziko South African Museum, Cape Town. The specimen was discovered by Frederik Petrus Wolvaardt in December 2000, loose on boulder-strewn slopes at the base of a cliff, at Farm Lemoenfontein 44, Rouxville District of the Free State Province. It was collected from the middle deposits of the Burgersdorp Formation of Beaufort Group. This horizon belongs to Subzone B of the ''Cynognathus'' Assemblage Zone, dating to the early Anisian stage of the early Middle Triassic period, about 246 million years ago. Farm Lemoenfontein 44 also yielded remains of the archosauriform ''Erythrosuchus ...
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Colobops
''Colobops'' is a genus of reptile from the Late Triassic of Connecticut. Only known from a tiny skull (estimated total length of 2.8 centimeters or 1.1 inches long), this reptile has been interpreted to possess skull attachments for very strong jaw muscles. This may have given it a very strong bite, despite its small size. However, under some interpretations of the CT scan data, ''Colobopss bite force may not have been unusual compared to other reptiles. The generic name, ''Colobops'', is a combination of ''κολοβός'' (''kolobós''), meaning shortened, and ''ὤψ (ṓps),'' meaning face. This translation, "shortened face", refers to its short and triangular skull. ''Colobops'' is known from a single species, ''Colobops noviportensis''. The specific name, ''noviportensis'', is a latinization of New Haven, the name of both the geological setting of its discovery (the New Haven Arkose) as well as a nearby large city. The phylogenetic relations of ''Colobops'' are controver ...
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Hyperodapedon
''Hyperodapedon'' is a genus of rhynchosaurs (beaked, archosaur-like reptiles) from the Triassic, Late Triassic period (Carnian stage). Fossils of the genus have been found in Africa, Asia, Europe and North and South America. Its first discovery and naming was found by Thomas Henry Huxley in 1859. ''Hyperodapedon'' was a herbivore that used its beaked premaxilla and hindlimbs to dig for plants in dry land. Description ''Hyperodapedon'' was a heavily built, stocky, animal. ''H. gordoni'' had total length around with skull length of to , but largest species, ''H. huxleyi'' had lower jaw about and skull length is estimated about . Apart from its beak, it had several rows of heavy teeth on each side of the upper jaw, and a single row on each side of the lower jaw, creating a powerful chopping action when it ate. It is believed to have been herbivorous, feeding mainly on seed ferns, and died out when these plants became extinct at Triassic–Jurassic extinction event, the end of ...
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Scaphonyx
''Hyperodapedon'' is a genus of rhynchosaurs (beaked, archosaur-like reptiles) from the Late Triassic period (Carnian stage). Fossils of the genus have been found in Africa, Asia, Europe and North and South America. Its first discovery and naming was found by Thomas Henry Huxley in 1859. ''Hyperodapedon'' was a herbivore that used its beaked premaxilla and hindlimbs to dig for plants in dry land. Description ''Hyperodapedon'' was a heavily built, stocky, animal. ''H. gordoni'' had total length around with skull length of to , but largest species, ''H. huxleyi'' had lower jaw about and skull length is estimated about . Apart from its beak, it had several rows of heavy teeth on each side of the upper jaw, and a single row on each side of the lower jaw, creating a powerful chopping action when it ate. It is believed to have been herbivorous, feeding mainly on seed ferns, and died out when these plants became extinct at the end of the Triassic. The diagnosis of ''Hyperodapedon ...
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Reptile
Reptiles, as most commonly defined are the animals in the class Reptilia ( ), a paraphyletic grouping comprising all sauropsids except birds. Living reptiles comprise turtles, crocodilians, squamates (lizards and snakes) and rhynchocephalians (tuatara). As of March 2022, the Reptile Database includes about 11,700 species. In the traditional Linnaean classification system, birds are considered a separate class to reptiles. However, crocodilians are more closely related to birds than they are to other living reptiles, and so modern cladistic classification systems include birds within Reptilia, redefining the term as a clade. Other cladistic definitions abandon the term reptile altogether in favor of the clade Sauropsida, which refers to all amniotes more closely related to modern reptiles than to mammals. The study of the traditional reptile orders, historically combined with that of modern amphibians, is called herpetology. The earliest known proto-reptiles originated around ...
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Stenaulorhynchus
''Stenaulorhynchus'' (possibly meaning "narrow tube beak") is an extinct genus of hyperodapedontid rhynchosaur known from the Middle Triassic (late Anisian stage) deposits of Tanganyika Territory, Tanzania. It was found in the Lifua Member of the Manda Formation in the Karoo Supergroup. It was named and first described by Sidney Henry Haughton in 1932. The type species is ''Stenaulorhynchus stockleyi'', a beaked herbivore measuring 1–6 meters in length. Description Dentition The teeth of ''Stenaulorhynchus'' were conical, pointed, and composed mostly of dentine, although new unworn teeth may have had a thin layer of enamel. They were set deeply into and fused with the jaw bones. They are arranged with two-to-several rows of teeth on top and only a few on bottom. The middle row of maxillary teeth only occupied the posterior third of the jaw while the other rows extended all the way forwards and sometimes down the crest of the jaw. The teeth at the front of the mouth, by th ...
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Hyperodapedontinae
Hyperodapedontinae is a subfamily of rhynchosaurs within the family Hyperodapedontidae. Fossils have been found from Argentina, Brazil, Canada, India, Madagascar, Scotland, Tanzania, United States and Zimbabwe. Phylogeny Hyperodapedontinae was erected by Sankar Chatterjee in 1969 as a coordinate name of the family Hyperodapedontidae Lydekker, 1985. Chatterjee (1969) originally named Hyperodapedontinae to include all Late Triassic rhynchosaurs known at that time, ''H. gordoni'', ''H. huxleyi'' and ''"Scaphonyx" fischeri'', and proposed a morphological diagnosis for the clade. ''Scaphonyx'' includes two additional species, ''S. africanus'' and ''S. australis'', all of which are currently believed to be dubious. As noted by Langer ''et al.'' (2000), using Chatterjee' morphological definition would exclude ''Teyumbaita'' and ''H. huenei'' from the clade, and thus it would be nested within ''Hyperodapedon''. To preserve the name, with its original stratigraphical meaning, Langer ''et a ...
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Langeronyx
''Langeronyx'' is an extinct genus of basal rhynchosaurid known from the early Middle Triassic (Anisian stage) Bromsgrove Sandstone Formation of Warwickshire, UK. It contains a single species, ''Langeronyx brodiei'', originally included in the genus ''Rhynchosaurus''. ''R. brodiei'' was first described and named by Michael Benton in 1990, but its redescription by Martín D. Ezcurra, Felipe Montefeltro and Richard J. Butler in 2016 recovered it as more closely related to the more advance hyperodapedontine than to the type species of ''Rhynchosaurus'' and thus it was moved to its own genus. The generic name ''Langeronyx'' honors the Brazilian paleontologist Max Cardoso Langer in recognition of his rhynchosaur research, combined with the Greek ''onyx'' (''óνυξ'') meaning "claw", a common suffix for rhynchosaur genera. ''L. brodiei'' is known solely from the holotype, a partial skull divided into the two specimenWARMS G6097/1and NHMUK PV R8495, housed in the Warwickshire Mu ...
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Howesia
''Howesia'' is an extinct genus of basal rhynchosaur from early Middle Triassic (early Anisian stage) deposits of Eastern Cape, South Africa. It is known from the holotype SAM 5884, a partial skeleton with palate and partial lower jaws and from two paratypes, SAM 5885 and SAM 5886. It was found in the Burgersdorp Formation of the middle deposits of the Beaufort Group (Karoo Basin) and referred to Subzone B of the Cynognathus Assemblage Zone. It was first named by Robert Broom in 1905 and the type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen ... is ''Howesia browni'', named after Alfred Brown. References Rhynchosaurs Middle Triassic reptiles of Africa Anisian life Fossils of South Africa Fossil taxa described in 1905 Taxa named by Robert Broom Prehistoric ...
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Mesosuchus
''Mesosuchus'' ("middle crocodile") is an extinct genus of basal Rhynchosaur from early Middle Triassic (early Anisian stage) deposits of Eastern Cape, South Africa. It is known from the holotype SAM 5882, a partial skeleton, and from the paratypes SAM 6046, SAM 6536, SAM 7416 and SAM 7701 from the ''Aliwal North Euparkeria site''. ''Mesosuchus'' is quite small, spanning around 30 cm in length. ''Mesosuchus'' was discovered and named by David Meredith Seares Watson in 1912. Fossil discovery SAM 5882, the holotype for ''Mesosuchus'', consists of a partial rostrum, palate, braincase, lower jaws, sections of articulated presacral vertebral column, nine articulated caudal vertebrae, portions of scapula and pelvic girdle, and partial forelimb and hindlimbs. SAM 6046, one of the paratypes of ''Mesosuchus'', consists of an incomplete right maxilla, an articulated series of the last ten presacrals, both sacrals, and first six caudals, partial forelimbs, left and right pelvic g ...
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Otischalkia
''Otischalkia'' is an extinct genus of archosauromoph from late Triassic (late Carnian stage) deposits of Howard County, Texas, US It is known from the holotype TMM 31025-263, left humerus and from the referred specimens TMM 31025-262, TMM 31025-266, TMM 31025-264, TMM 31185-92 and TMM 31185-93. It was found in the Lower Dockum Group near the abandoned settlement of Otis Chalk. It was first named by Adrian P. Hunt and Spencer G. Lucas in 1991 and the type species is ''Otischalkia elderae''. Originally described as a rhynchosaur, several recent studies found ''O. elderae'' to represent a ''nomen dubium''. Nesbitt ''et al.'' (2021) came to the conclusion that the holotype of ''Otischalkia'' actually belongs to an azendohsaurid Azendohsauridae is a family of allokotosaurian archosauromorphs that lived during the Middle to Late Triassic period, around 242-216 million years ago. The family was originally named solely for the eponymous '' Azendohsau ...
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