''Ecteninion'' 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 meat-eating
cynodonts that lived during the
Late Triassic
The Late Triassic is the third and final epoch of the Triassic Period in the geologic time scale, spanning the time between Ma and Ma (million years ago). It is preceded by the Middle Triassic Epoch and followed by the Early Jurassic Epoch. ...
(
Carnian
The Carnian (less commonly, Karnian) is the lowermost stage (stratigraphy), stage of the Upper Triassic series (stratigraphy), Series (or earliest age (geology), age of the Late Triassic Epoch (reference date), Epoch). It lasted from 237 to 227 m ...
) in
South America
South America is a continent entirely in the Western Hemisphere and mostly in the Southern Hemisphere, with a relatively small portion in the Northern Hemisphere at the northern tip of the continent. It can also be described as the sout ...
. 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 ...
''Ecteninion lunensis'' was named by R.N. Martinez, C.L. May, and
C.A. Forster in 1996. ''E. lunensis'' is known from a nearly complete skull of about in length. It was found in the Cancha de Bochas Member of the
Ischigualasto Formation
The Ischigualasto Formation is a Late Triassic fossiliferous formation and Lagerstätte in the Ischigualasto-Villa Unión Basin of the southwestern La Rioja Province and northeastern San Juan Province in northwestern Argentina. The formation ...
in the
Ischigualasto-Villa Unión Basin in northwestern
Argentina
Argentina (), officially the Argentine Republic ( es, link=no, República Argentina), is a country in the southern half of South America. Argentina covers an area of , making it the second-largest country in South America after Brazil, th ...
.
''Ecteninion''
at Fossilworks.org It has been interpreted as a basal eucynodont. 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 ...
is in the collection of the Universidad Nacional de San Juan.
References
Further reading
* Martinez ''et al.'' (1996) "A new carnivorous cynodont from the Ischigualasto formation (Late Triassic, Argentina), with comments on eucynodont phylogeny." ''J. Vertebr. Paleontol.'' 16(2), p. 271-284.
Prehistoric probainognathians
Prehistoric cynodont genera
Carnian genera
Late Triassic synapsids of South America
Triassic Argentina
Fossils of Argentina
Ischigualasto Formation
Fossil taxa described in 1996
Taxa named by Catherine Forster
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