''Langeronyx'' 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 Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus com ...

of basal rhynchosaurid known from the early

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 and ...

(

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 Ep ...

stage) Bromsgrove Sandstone Formation of

Warwickshire Warwickshire (; abbreviated Warks) is a county in the West Midlands region of England. The county town is Warwick, and the largest town is Nuneaton. The county is famous for being the birthplace of William Shakespeare at Stratford-upon-Avon an ...

, UK. It contains a single species, ''Langeronyx brodiei'', originally included in the genus ''

Rhynchosaurus ''Rhynchosaurus'' (''beaked lizard'') is a genus of rhynchosaur that lived during the Middle Triassic period. It lived in Europe. It was related to the archosaurs, but not within that group. The type species of ''Rhynchosaurus'' is ''R. articep ...

''. ''R. brodiei'' was first described and named by

Michael Benton Michael James Benton One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (born 8 April 1956) is a British palaeontologist, and professor of vertebrate palaeontology in the School of Earth Sciences ...

in 1990, but its redescription by Martín D. Ezcurra, Felipe Montefeltro and Richard J. Butler in 2016 recovered it as more closely related to the more advance hyperodapedontine than to the

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen ...

of ''Rhynchosaurus'' and thus it was moved to its own genus. The generic name ''Langeronyx'' honors the Brazilian paleontologist Max Cardoso Langer in recognition of his rhynchosaur research, combined with the

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

''onyx'' (''óνυξ'') meaning "claw", a common suffix for rhynchosaur genera. ''L. brodiei'' is known solely 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 several ...

, 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, the ...

divided into the two specimen
WARMS G6097/1
and NHMUK PV R8495, housed in the Warwickshire Museum, Warwick and

Natural History Museum, London The Natural History Museum in London is a museum that exhibits a vast range of specimens from various segments of natural history. It is one of three major museums on Exhibition Road in South Kensington, the others being the Science Museum an ...

, respectively. Other specimens originally referred to ''R. brodiei'' either do not overlap with its type or can be just as likely referred to other basal rhynchosaurids (like '' Fodonyx spenceri'' and '' Bentonyx sidensis'' from the coeval

Otter Sandstone Formation The Otter Sandstone Formation is an obsolete geological unit in England, now referred to as the Helsby Sandstone Formation.http://www.bgs.ac.uk/Lexicon/lexicon.cfm?pub=HEY (BGS on-line lexicon of rock units) It preserves fossils dated to the Tr ...

, UK). ''L. brodiei'' is one of two basal

archosauromorph Archosauromorpha (Greek for "ruling lizard forms") is a clade of diapsid reptiles containing all reptiles more closely related to archosaurs (such as crocodilians and dinosaurs, including birds) rather than lepidosaurs (such as tuataras, liza ...

s known from the Bromsgrove Sandstone Formation, the other being the lesser known '' Rhombopholis scutulata''.

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 d ...

based on Ezcurra ''et al.'' (2016):

Links

3d-fossils.ac.uk - WARMS G6097/1

Paleobiology Database - Langeronyx

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q24908852 Rhynchosaurs Anisian life Middle Triassic reptiles of Europe Triassic England Fossils of England Fossil taxa described in 2016 Prehistoric reptile genera