''Pelorocephalus'' (meaning "monstrous head" 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 ...

) 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 chigutisaurid

temnospondyl Temnospondyli (from Greek τέμνειν, ''temnein'' 'to cut' and σπόνδυλος, ''spondylos'' 'vertebra') is a diverse order of small to giant tetrapods—often considered primitive amphibians—that flourished worldwide during the Carbo ...

s from 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 ...

) Cacheutá Formation of the Cuyo Basin and 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 ...

of the Ischigualasto-Villa Unión Basin, both 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 ...

. Three species are currently recognized: 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 ...

''P. mendozensis'', which was named in 1944, ''P. tenax'', which was named in 1949 as a species of '' Chigutisaurus'' and reassigned to ''Pelorocephalus'' in 1999, and ''P. cacheutensis'', which was named in 1953 as another species of ''Chigutisaurus'' and reassigned to ''Pelorocephalus'' along with ''P. tenax''. A fourth species, ''P. ischigualastensis'', was named in 1975 after the formation it was found in. The species ''P. tunuyanensis'' was named in 1948 but has since been synonymized with ''P. mendozensis''. The largest individuals are estimated to have been over in length.Angellis.net
/ref>

References

Chigutisaurids Carnian genera Triassic temnospondyls of South America Late Triassic animals of South America Triassic Argentina Fossils of Argentina Ischigualasto Formation Fossil taxa described in 1944 Taxa named by Ángel Cabrera {{temnospondyli-stub