''Sinokannemeyeria'' is a

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 ...

kannemeyeriiform Kannemeyeriiformes is a group of large-bodied Triassic dicynodonts. As a clade, Kannemeyeriiformes has been defined to include the species ''Kannemeyeria simocephalus'' and all dicynodonts more closely related to it than to the species '' Lystro ...

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 ...

that lived during the

Anisian In the geologic timescale, the Anisian is the lower stage or earliest age of the Middle Triassic series or epoch and lasted from million years ago until million years ago. The Anisian Age succeeds the Olenekian Age (part of the Lower Triassic ...

age of

Middle Triassic In the geologic timescale, the Middle Triassic is the second of three epochs of the Triassic period or the middle of three series in which the Triassic system is divided in chronostratigraphy. The Middle Triassic spans the time between Ma an ...

period in what is now

Shanxi Shanxi (; ; formerly romanised as Shansi) is a landlocked province of the People's Republic of China and is part of the North China region. The capital and largest city of the province is Taiyuan, while its next most populated prefecture-leve ...

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's List of countries and dependencies by population, most populous country, with a Population of China, population exceeding 1.4 billion, slig ...

.J. Liu. 2015. New discoveries from the Sinokannemeyeria-Shansisuchus Assemblage Zone: 1. Kannemeyeriiformes from Shanxi, China. Vertebrata PalAsiatica 53(1):16-28

Description

''Sinokannemeyeria'' was about in length and in weight. It had relatively short, stumpy legs which were held slightly sprawling gait to the sides of its body. The limb girdles were formed into large, heavy plates of bone to support the weight of the wide, heavily built body. ''Sinokannemeyeria'' was probably not a fast or agile animal. The front of the jaw had a small horn-covered beak, and there were two small tusks growing from bulbous projections on the upper jaw. These tusks could have been used to dig up roots. Compared to ''

Kannemeyeria ''Kannemeyeria'' is a genus of dicynodont that lived during the Anisian age of Middle Triassic period in what is now Africa and South America. The generic name is given in honor of Dr. Daniel Rossouw Kannemeyer, the South African fossil collect ...

'', it had broader snout, smaller

temporal fenestrae 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 ...

and lower temporal crests. ''Sinokannemeyeria'' may had rather indiscriminately seized and torn vegetation in contrast to the more selective cropping of ''Kannemeyeria''.

Classification

Below is a

cladogram A cladogram (from Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an evolutionary tree because it does not show how ancestors are related to ...

from Kammerer ''et al.'' (2013):

References

Anomodont genera Middle Triassic synapsids Triassic synapsids of Asia Kannemeyeriiformes Fossil taxa described in 1937 Taxa named by Yang Zhongjian {{triassic-animal-stub

Description

Classification

See also

References