''Cryptovenator'' (''Crypto'', from Greek kryptos (hidden, secret); ''venator'', from Latin (hunter)) is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

sphenacodontid Sphenacodontidae (Greek: "wedge point tooth family") is an extinct family (biology), family of small to large, advanced, carnivore, carnivorous, Late Pennsylvanian to Guadalupian, middle Permian pelycosaurs. The most recent one, ''Dimetrodon ang ...

pelycosaur Pelycosaur ( ) is an older term for basal or primitive Late Paleozoic synapsids, excluding the therapsids and their descendants. Previously, the term ''mammal-like reptile'' had been used, and pelycosaur was considered an order, but this is no ...

s which existed in

Germany Germany,, officially the Federal Republic of Germany, is a country in Central Europe. It is the second most populous country in Europe after Russia, and the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany is situated betwe ...

during the latest

Carboniferous The Carboniferous ( ) is a geologic period and system of the Paleozoic that spans 60 million years from the end of the Devonian Period million years ago ( Mya), to the beginning of the Permian Period, million years ago. The name ''Carbonifero ...

(late

Gzhelian The Gzhelian ( ) is an age in the ICS geologic timescale or a stage in the stratigraphic column. It is the youngest stage of the Pennsylvanian, the youngest subsystem of the Carboniferous. The Gzhelian lasted from to Ma. It follows the Kasim ...

age, 300 Ma ± 2.4 Ma). It 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 several ...

LFN−PW 2008/5599−LS, an anterior right mandible fragment, recovered from a dark, fine grained sandstone of the middle

Remigiusberg Formation The Remigiusberg in the county of Kusel (district), Kusel in the German state of Rhineland-Palatinate is a hill, 368 metres high, which belongs to the western part of the North Palatine Uplands and only stands above the surrounding terrain by ...

. It was first named by Jörg Fröbisch, Rainer R. Schoch, Johannes Müller, Thomas Schindler and Dieter Schweiss in

2011 File:2011 Events Collage.png, From top left, clockwise: a protester partaking in Occupy Wall Street heralds the beginning of the Occupy movement; protests against Libyan dictator Muammar Gaddafi, who was killed that October; a young man celebrate ...

and the type species is ''Cryptovenator hirschbergeri''.

Phylogeny

Cladogram A cladogram (from Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an evolutionary tree because it does not show how ancestors are related to d ...

after Fröbisch ''et al.'', 2011:

References

Sphenacodontidae Carboniferous synapsids Prehistoric synapsid genera Prehistoric synapsids of Europe Fossil taxa described in 2011 {{Paleo-Synapsid-stub

Phylogeny

See also

References