''Axitectum'' is an
extinct genus
Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nom ...
of
bystrowianid reptiliomorph
Reptiliomorpha (meaning reptile-shaped; in PhyloCode known as ''Pan-Amniota'') is a clade containing the amniotes and those tetrapods that share a more recent common ancestor with amniotes than with living amphibians (lissamphibians). It was defi ...
from lower
Triassic
The Triassic ( ) is a geologic period and system (stratigraphy), system which spans 50.6 million years from the end of the Permian Period 251.902 million years ago (Year#Abbreviations yr and ya, Mya), to the beginning of the Jurassic Period 201.36 ...
deposits of
Nizhni Novgorod
Nizhny Novgorod ( ; rus, links=no, Нижний Новгород, a=Ru-Nizhny Novgorod.ogg, p=ˈnʲiʐnʲɪj ˈnovɡərət ), colloquially shortened to Nizhny, from the 13th to the 17th century Novgorod of the Lower Land, formerly known as Gork ...
and
Kirov Regions,
Russia
Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eig ...
. It was a rather large animal judging by the size of its vertebrae. The back was covered in bands of highly ornamented
osteoderm
Osteoderms are bony deposits forming scales, plates, or other structures based in the dermis. Osteoderms are found in many groups of extant and extinct reptiles and amphibians, including lizards, crocodilians, frogs, temnospondyls (extinc ...
plates, similar to those found in modern crocodiles. The bands overlapped with the next band at the posterior end.
[ Michael J. Benton, Mikhail A. Shishkin and David M. Unwin (2003): The Age of Dinosaurs in Russia and Mongolia. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK.]
Relevant page
from google books
Google Books (previously known as Google Book Search, Google Print, and by its code-name Project Ocean) is a service from Google Inc. that searches the full text of books and magazines that Google has scanned, converted to text using optical ...
It was first named by M.A. Shishkin and I.V. Novikov in
1992 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 specime ...
is ''Axitectum vjushkovi''. ''A. vjushkovi'' is known from the
holotype
A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of sever ...
PIN 1025/334, which consists of armor scute. It was found in the
Vokhminskaya Formation of the Vokhmin Horizon and named in honour of Vyushkov, who was a Russian paleontologist. A second species, ''A. georgi'', was named by I.V. Novikov and M.A. Shishkin in
2000
File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from S ...
on the basis of another armor scute (holotype PIN 953/392). It was found in the
Fedorovskaya Formation of the Yarenskian Superhorizon and named in honour of the geologist Georgii Ivanovich Blom. A third species, ''A. blomi'' (which also named in honour of G.I. Blom, in
1992), is now considered
junior synonym of the type species. Other materials also referred to ''Axitectum''.
References
Chroniosuchians
Triassic tetrapods
Fossils of Russia
{{paleo-amphibian-stub