''Compsodon'' 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
dicynodont
Dicynodontia is an extinct clade of anomodonts, an extinct type of non-mammalian therapsid. Dicynodonts were herbivorous animals with a pair of tusks, hence their name, which means 'two dog tooth'. Members of the group possessed a horny, typic ...
belonging to the superfamily
Emydopoidea. Fossils have been found in the
Balfour Formation
The Balfour Formation is a geological formation that is found in the Beaufort Group, a major geological group that forms part of the greater Karoo Supergroup in South Africa. The Balfour Formation is the uppermost formation of the Adelaide Subgro ...
of South Africa and the
Madumabisa Mudstone of Zambia.
Description
''Compsodon helmoedi'' was originally described by
Egbert Cornelis Nicolaas van Hoepen Egbert Cornelis Nicolaas van Hoepen (10 November 1884 – 2 May 1966) was a Dutch-born South African paleontologist.
Biography
Born at Vlissingen, around the age of six he moved with his parents to the South African Republic. When British for ...
in 1934 on the basis of a single specimen from late Permian deposits in the Karoo Basin of South Africa. Two additional specimens from South African museum collections and three new specimens from the Luangwa Basin of Zambia have elucidated new aspects of the morphology of this species and indicate that it occurred in the upper ''Cistecephalus'' and lower ''Daptocephalus'' assemblage zones. ''Compsodon'' can be diagnosed by features of its palate, but also the presence of maxillary postcanines and parietals fused and narrowly exposed between broad postorbitals on the dorsal surface of the skull.
[Kenneth D. Angielczyk; Christian F. Kammerer (2017). The cranial morphology, phylogenetic position and biogeography of the upper Permian dicynodont Compsodon helmoedi van Hoepen (Therapsida, Anomodontia). ''Papers in Palaeontology''. in press. doi:10.1002/spp2.1087.]
See also
*
List of therapsids
This list of therapsids is an attempt to create a comprehensive listing of all genera that have ever been included in the Therapsida excluding mammals and purely vernacular terms. The list includes all commonly accepted genera, but also genera tha ...
References
External links
The main groups of non-mammalian synapsids at Mikko's Phylogeny Archive
Dicynodonts
Lopingian synapsids of Africa
Fossils of South Africa
Fossils of Zambia
Fossil taxa described in 1934
Taxa named by Egbert Cornelis Nicolaas van Hoepen
Anomodont genera
{{anomodont-stub