Description
This animal had skull of which suggest a presacral body length of and weight about due to the similar parameters to the European hedgehog. ''Sinoconodon'' closely resembled early mammaliaforms like '' Morganucodon'', but it is regarded as more basal, differing substantially from ''Morganucodon'' in its dentition and growth habits. Like most other non-mammalian tetrapods, such as reptiles and amphibians, it was polyphyodont, replacing many of its teeth throughout its lifetime, and it seems to have grown slowly but continuously until its death. It was thus somewhat less mammal-like than mammaliaforms such as morganucodonts and docodonts. The combination of basal tetrapod and mammalian features makes it a unique transitional fossil.Mammals of the Mesozoic: The least mammal-like mammalsTaxonomy
''Sinoconodon'' was named by Patterson and Olson in 1961. Its type is ''Sinoconodon rigneyi''. It was assigned to Triconodontidae by Patterson and Olson in 1961; to Triconodonta by Jenkins and Crompton in 1979; to Sinoconodontidae by Carroll in 1988; to Mammaliamorpha by Wible in 1991; to Mammalia by Luo and Wu in 1994; to Mammalia by Kielan-Jaworowska ''et al.'' in 2004; and to Mammaliaformes by Luo ''et al.'' in 2001 and Bi ''et al.'' in 2014.Phylogeny
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