Jump to content

Neosaurus

From Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia

This is an old revision of this page, as edited by FunkMonk (talk | contribs) at 15:02, 28 July 2013. The present address (URL) is a permanent link to this revision, which may differ significantly from the current revision.

Neosaurus
Temporal range: Early Permian
Holotype
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Domain: Eukaryota
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Clade: Synapsida
Family: Sphenacodontidae
Genus: Neosaurus
Nopsca, 1923
Type species
Neosaurus cynodus
(Gervais, 1869)

Neosaurus is a pelycosaur-grade synapsid from the Early Permian of the Jura region of France. It is known only from a partial maxilla or upper jaw bone and an associated impression of the bone. The teardrop shape of the teeth in the jaw indicate that Neosaurus belongs to the family Sphenacodontidae, which includes the better-known Dimetrodon from the southwestern United States. The maxilla was first attributed to an early diapsid reptile in 1857, and later a crocodylomorph in 1869, before finally being identified as a sphenacodont synapsid in 1899, a classification that still holds today.[1]

A species of the hadrosaur dinosaur Hypsibema, H. missouriensis, is also called Neosaurus, although because the name was already in use, that species was renamed Parrosaurus before being reassigned to Hypsibema.

References

  1. ^ Attention: This template ({{cite doi}}) is deprecated. To cite the publication identified by doi:10.4202/app.2012.0105, please use {{cite journal}} (if it was published in a bona fide academic journal, otherwise {{cite report}} with |doi=10.4202/app.2012.0105 instead.