''Ototriton'' 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 rhineurid amphisbaenian or worm lizard from the Early Eocene of the western United States, including the type and only species ''Ototriton solidus''. Paleontologist F. B. Loomis named ''Ototriton'' in 1919 on the basis of a single skull from the

Wind River Formation The Wind River Formation is a geologic formation in Wyoming. It preserves fossils dating back to the Paleogene period. A recent study by Stanford suggests that fracking has contaminated the entire ground water resource in the basin. Fossil conte ...

in Wyoming, misinterpreting it as the skull of a

salamander Salamanders are a group of amphibians typically characterized by their lizard-like appearance, with slender bodies, blunt snouts, short limbs projecting at right angles to the body, and the presence of a tail in both larvae and adults. All t ...

. Unlike salamanders and like other rhineurids, ''Ototriton'' has a shovel-shaped snout that it presumably used for burrowing underground. ''Ototriton'' is one of the earliest known rhineurids and also one of the largest. Several other species have been assigned to ''Ototriton'' since Loomis named the genus in 1919. In 1928, paleontologist

Charles W. Gilmore Charles Whitney Gilmore (March 11, 1874 – September 27, 1945) was an American paleontologist who gained renown in the early 20th century for his work on vertebrate fossils during his career at the United States National Museum (now the N ...

assigned a vertebra from the

Bridger Formation The Bridger Formation is a geologic formation in southwestern Wyoming. It preserves fossils dating back to the Ypresian Epoch of the Paleogene Period. The formation was named by American geologist Ferdinand Vandeveer Hayden for Fort Bridger, whi ...

of Wyoming, first classified as ''

Glyptosaurus Glyptosaurinae is an extinct subfamily of anguid lizards that lived in the Northern Hemisphere during the Late Cretaceous and the Paleogene. Description Glyptosaurines are known primarily from their osteoderms, scale-like pieces of bone that ar ...

anceps'', to ''Ototriton'' based on its large size, but later attributed it to the snake '' Lestophis crassus''. In 1945, Gilmore and G. I. Jepsen named a new species of ''Ototriton'', ''O. minor'', on the basis of another skull from the Wind River Formation, distinguishing it from ''O. solidus'' on the basis of its smaller size. ''O. minor'' was later classified as its own genus, ''Jepsibaena''. The most recent study to consider the specimen places it in the species '' Protorhineura hatcherii''.

References

Amphisbaenians Eocene lepidosaurs Eocene reptiles of North America Prehistoric lizard genera † Fossil taxa described in 1919 {{paleo-lizard-stub