Cryptodontia is a group of

dicynodont Dicynodontia is an extinct clade of anomodonts, an extinct type of non-mammalian therapsid. Dicynodonts were herbivores that typically bore a pair of tusks, hence their name, which means 'two dog tooth'. Members of the group possessed a horny, t ...

therapsids that includes the families Geikiidae,

Oudenodontidae Oudenodontidae is an extinct family of dicynodont therapsids, known from the Late Permian of Malawi, Namibia, Russia, South Africa, Tanzania, and Zambia. It includes three genera, '' Australobarbarus'', ''Oudenodon ''Oudenodon'' is an ex ...

, and Rhachiocephalidae. It was first named in 1860 by English paleontologist

Richard Owen Sir Richard Owen (20 July 1804 – 18 December 1892) was an English biologist, comparative anatomy, comparative anatomist and paleontology, palaeontologist. Owen is generally considered to have been an outstanding naturalist with a remarkabl ...

. Owen intended Cryptodontia to be a family, and the name was later changed to "Cryptodontidae" to reflect this ranking. The name Cryptodontia was restored in 2009 when it was redefined as a larger

clade In biology, a clade (), also known as a Monophyly, monophyletic group or natural group, is a group of organisms that is composed of a common ancestor and all of its descendants. Clades are the fundamental unit of cladistics, a modern approach t ...

containing several families of dicynodonts.

Classification

Below is a

cladogram A cladogram (from Greek language, Greek ''clados'' "branch" and ''gramma'' "character") is a diagram used in cladistics to show relations among organisms. A cladogram is not, however, an Phylogenetic tree, evolutionary tree because it does not s ...

from Kammerer ''et al.'' (2011) showing the

phylogenetic In biology, phylogenetics () is the study of the evolutionary history of life using observable characteristics of organisms (or genes), which is known as phylogenetic inference. It infers the relationship among organisms based on empirical dat ...

placement of Cryptodontia:

References

Dicynodontia Guadalupian first appearances Permian extinctions {{anomodont-stub