Dinosaurus

Dinosaurus is an extinct genus of enigmatic therapsids that lived during the Middle Permian in what is now Russia. Initially described as a species of the related genus Rhopalodon by Gotthelf Fischer von Waldheim in 1845, the taxon was assigned its own genus by the same author two years later under the new combinationD. murchisonii. The only known specimen consists of cranial remains belonging to a single individual discovered in a copper mine of the former Orenburg Governorate, west of the Ural Mountains. The animal's generic name refers to the supposedly "wild and voracious" nature, while the specific name honours the Scottish geologist Roderick Murchison. Despite its name, Dinosaurus is not a dinosaur; like Dimetrodon, it belongs to the cladeSynapsida and is therefore more closely related to mammals than to dinosaurs, the latter being sauropsids.