Pantelosaurus
| Pantelosaurus Temporal range: Early Permian, Asselian | |
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| Fossils | |
Scientific classification  | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Clade: | Synapsida |
| Clade: | Sphenacodontia |
| Genus: | †Pantelosaurus von Huene, 1925 |
| Type species | |
| †Pantelosaurus saxonicus von Huene, 1925 | |
| Synonyms | |
Pantelosaurus (meaning "complete lizard") is an extinct genus of basal sphenacodont known from the Early Permian period (Asselian stage) of Saxony, Germany. It contains a single species, Pantelosaurus saxonicus.[1][2]
Discovery
Pantelosaurus is known from about 6 individuals including skulls and partial postcranial skeletons. All specimens were collected at Königin-Carola-Schacht locality, in Dresden, from the uppermost part of the Döhlen Formation, lower Rotliegend Group (Döhlen Basin), dating to the Asselian stage of the Cisuralian series, about 299-296.4 million years old.[1][2]
Classification
Pantelosaurus was first described by von Huene (1925) as a pelycosaur. In 1940, Alfred Sherwood Romer & Llewellyn Price revised the taxonomy of pelycosaurs and synonymized Pantelosaurus with Haptodus, creating the new combination Haptodus saxonicus. After describing a new species of Haptodus in 1977, Currie (1979) synonymized all European haptodontines, as well as Cutleria wilmarthi, with the type of the genus, H. baylei. Later, Laurin (1993 and 1994) considered Haptodontinae to represent a polyphyletic grade of basal sphenacodonts, and revalidated Pantelosaurus among other genera and species. His revision has been accepted since.[3] Only three phylogenetic analyses included Pantelosaurus. Laurin (1994), Fröbisch et al. (2011) and Benson (in press) recovered it as a basal sphenacodont, more derived then Haptodus garnettensis (Currie, 1977) or in a polytomy with it.[1][2][4] The cladogram below shows Pantelosaurus phylogenetic position among other synapsids following Benson (in press).[2]
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Etymology
Pantelosaurus was first described and named by Friedrich von Huene in 1925 and the type species is Pantelosaurus saxonicus. The generic name is derived from the Greek word pantelos "complete, finished" in reference to the nearly complete condition of the original fossil specimens, providing information on the animal's skull and most of its skeleton. The specific name is derived from the name of the Free State of Saxony in which the holotype was found.[1]
References
- 1 2 3 4 Friedrich von Huene (1925). "Ein neuer Pelycosaurier aus der unteren Permformaiton Sachens". Geologische und Paläontologische Abhandlungen 18: 215–264.
- 1 2 3 4 Benson, R.J. (2012). "Interrelationships of basal synapsids: cranial and postcranial morphological partitions suggest different topologies". Journal of Systematic Paleontology. in press. doi:10.1080/14772019.2011.631042.
- ↑ Michel Laurin (1994). "Re-evaluation of Cutleria wilmarthi, an Early Permian synapsid from Colorado". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology 14 (1): 134–138. doi:10.1080/02724634.1994.10011544.
- ↑ Jörg Fröbisch, Rainer R. Schoch, Johannes Müller, Thomas Schindler and Dieter Schweiss (2011). "A new basal sphenacodontid synapsid from the Late Carboniferous of the Saar-Nahe Basin, Germany" (PDF). Acta Palaeontologica Polonica 56 (1): 113–120. doi:10.4202/app.2010.0039.