Cryptodontia is a group of dicynodont therapsids that includes the families

Geikiidae Geikiidae is a family of Late Permian dicynodonts. Fossils are known from Scotland, South Africa, and Tanzania. The family was first named by Franz Nopcsa in 1923, although Friedrich von Huene's 1948 description of the family brought it into comm ...

, Oudenodontidae, and

Rhachiocephalidae Rhachiocephalidae is an extinct family of dicynodont therapsids. It includes two genera from the Late Permian of southern Africa, '' Rhachiocephalus'' and '' Kitchinganomodon''. Rhachiocephalids were the largest dicynodonts in the Permian, althou ...

. It was first named in 1860 by English paleontologist

Richard Owen Sir Richard Owen (20 July 1804 – 18 December 1892) was an English biologist, comparative anatomist and paleontologist. Owen is generally considered to have been an outstanding naturalist with a remarkable gift for interpreting fossils. Owe ...

. Owen intended Cryptodontia to be a family, and the name was later changed to "Cryptodontidae" to reflect this ranking. The name Cryptodontia was restored in 2009 when it was redefined as a larger

clade A clade (), also known as a monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that are monophyletic – that is, composed of a common ancestor and all its lineal descendants – on a phylogenetic tree. Rather than the English term, ...

containing several families of dicynodonts.

Classification

Below is a cladogram from Kammerer ''et al.'' (2011) showing the phylogenetic placement of Cryptodontia:

References

Dicynodonts Guadalupian first appearances Permian extinctions {{anomodont-stub