''Catactegenys'' 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 xantusiid lizard from the

Late Cretaceous The Late Cretaceous (100.5–66 Ma) is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous Period is divided in the geologic time scale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous Series. The Cretaceous is named after ''creta'', ...

of Texas. 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 ...

, ''Catactegenys solaster'', was named in 2013 from the late-

Campanian The Campanian is the fifth of six ages of the Late Cretaceous Epoch on the geologic timescale of the International Commission on Stratigraphy (ICS). In chronostratigraphy, it is the fifth of six stages in the Upper Cretaceous Series. Campani ...

-age Aguja Formation in

Brewster County Brewster County is a county located in the U.S. state of Texas. It is in West Texas and its county seat (and only city) is Alpine. It is one of the nine counties that comprise the Trans-Pecos region, and borders Mexico. Brewster County is th ...

. The genus name means "breaker jaw" in

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

, a reference to its inferred ability to break hard shells with its jaws as an adaptation for a

durophagous Durophagy is the eating behavior of animals that consume hard-shelled or exoskeleton bearing organisms, such as corals, shelled mollusks, or crabs. It is mostly used to describe fish, but is also used when describing reptiles, including fossil tu ...

diet, and the species name means "lone star", a reference to Texas, the "lone star state". ''Catactegenys'' is known only from jaw bones, but the size of these bones indicates that it was larger than all other known xantusiids. The teeth are robust and heavily worn, suggesting that ''Catactegenys'' may have eaten hard-shelled molluscs, which are common in the Aguja Formation.

References

Cretaceous lizards Late Cretaceous lepidosaurs of North America Fossil taxa described in 2013 Paleontology in Texas {{paleo-lizard-stub