''Turfanodon'' is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of a kind of organism or of a group of kinds (taxon), usually a species. The moment of extinction is generally considered to be the death of the last individual of the species, although the capacity to breed and ...

genus of dicynodont therapsid from the Late Permian Sunan, Guodikeng, and Naobaogou Formations of

China China, officially the People's Republic of China (PRC), is a country in East Asia. It is the world's most populous country, with a population exceeding 1.4 billion, slightly ahead of India. China spans the equivalent of five time zones and ...

. The holotype of ''T. bogdaensis'' was discovered between 1963-1964 and was originally named in 1973 by A. Sun with the type species ''Turfanodon bogdaensis'', ''Turfanodon'' was reclassified as a

junior synonym The Botanical and Zoological Codes of nomenclature treat the concept of synonymy differently. * In botanical nomenclature, a synonym is a scientific name that applies to a taxon that (now) goes by a different scientific name. For example, Linna ...

of the related '' Dicynodon'' in 1988 by G. M. King. ''T. bogdaensis'' remained a species of ''Dicynodon'' for over two decades before the genus was reinstated in 2011 in a revision of the taxonomy of ''Dicynodon'' by palaeontologist Christian Kammerer. A second species from Inner Mongolia, ''T. jiufengensis'', was named in 2021 by palaeontologist Jun Liu from a nearly complete skeleton and other referred bones. ''Turfanodon'' was a relatively large dicynodont, and similar in appearance to the related ''

Daptocephalus ''Daptocephalus'' is an extinct genus of non- mammalian synapsid anomodont dicynodont, it which was found in Late Permian strata, in a biozone known precisely for the presence of fossils of this dicynodont, the ''Daptocephalus'' Zone, in the Ka ...

'' from South Africa.

References

Dicynodonts Anomodont genera Permian synapsids of Asia Lopingian genus extinctions Permian China Fossils of China Paleontology in Xinjiang Fossil taxa described in 1973 {{anomodont-stub