''Sangaia'' 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 rhytidosteid

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 ...

from the early

Triassic The Triassic ( ) is a geologic period and system (stratigraphy), system which spans 50.6 million years from the end of the Permian Period 251.902 million years ago (Year#Abbreviations yr and ya, Mya), to the beginning of the Jurassic Period 201.36 ...

period Period may refer to: Common uses * Era, a length or span of time * Full stop (or period), a punctuation mark Arts, entertainment, and media * Period (music), a concept in musical composition * Periodic sentence (or rhetorical period), a concept ...

of Rio Grande do Sul,

Brazil Brazil ( pt, Brasil; ), officially the Federative Republic of Brazil (Portuguese: ), is the largest country in both South America and Latin America. At and with over 217 million people, Brazil is the world's fifth-largest country by area ...

. It is known from 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 ...

UMVT 4302, the left half of a partial

skull The skull is a bone protective cavity for the brain. The skull is composed of four types of bone i.e., cranial bones, facial bones, ear ossicles and hyoid bone. However two parts are more prominent: the cranium and the mandible. In humans, th ...

, a partial palate, from the paratype UMVT 4303, a partial right palatal fragment and from the referred specimens PV 0497 T and MCN PV 2606, skull fragments, recovered from the Sanga do Cabral Formation in the Rośario do Sul Group.

Taxonomy

This taxon originally was named ''Cabralia lavinai'' by Sérgio Dias-da-Silva, Claudia Marsicano and Cesar Leandro Schultz in 2006 but this name was preoccupied by the Brazilian moth '' Cabralia'' (Moore, 1882). Thus, Dias-da-Silva and Marsicano proposed ''Sangaia'' as a replacement generic name later in 2006.

References

Triassic temnospondyls of South America Triassic Brazil Fossils of Brazil Fossil taxa described in 2006 {{temnospondyli-stub