''Axitectum'' is an extinct

genus Genus ( plural genera ) is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms as well as viruses. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial n ...

of bystrowianid

reptiliomorph Reptiliomorpha (meaning reptile-shaped; in PhyloCode known as ''Pan-Amniota'') is a clade containing the amniotes and those tetrapods that share a more recent common ancestor with amniotes than with living amphibians (lissamphibians). It was de ...

from lower

Triassic The Triassic ( ) is a geologic period and system which spans 50.6 million years from the end of the Permian Period 251.902 million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Jurassic Period 201.36 Mya. The Triassic is the first and shortest period ...

deposits of

Nizhni Novgorod Nizhny Novgorod ( ; rus, links=no, Нижний Новгород, a=Ru-Nizhny Novgorod.ogg, p=ˈnʲiʐnʲɪj ˈnovɡərət ), colloquially shortened to Nizhny, from the 13th to the 17th century Novgorod of the Lower Land, formerly known as Gork ...

and Kirov Regions,

Russia Russia (, , ), or the Russian Federation, is a transcontinental country spanning Eastern Europe and Northern Asia. It is the largest country in the world, with its internationally recognised territory covering , and encompassing one-eigh ...

. It was a rather large animal judging by the size of its vertebrae. The back was covered in bands of highly ornamented

osteoderm Osteoderms are bony deposits forming scales, plates, or other structures based in the dermis. Osteoderms are found in many groups of extant and extinct reptiles and amphibians, including lizards, crocodilians, frogs, temnospondyls (extinc ...

plates, similar to those found in modern crocodiles. The bands overlapped with the next band at the posterior end.

Michael J. Benton Michael James Benton One or more of the preceding sentences incorporates text from the royalsociety.org website where: (born 8 April 1956) is a British palaeontologist, and professor of vertebrate palaeontology in the School of Earth Sciences ...

, Mikhail A. Shishkin and David M. Unwin (2003): The Age of Dinosaurs in Russia and Mongolia. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge UK.
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It was first named by M.A. Shishkin and I.V. Novikov in

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and the

type species In zoological nomenclature, a type species (''species typica'') is the species name with which the name of a genus or subgenus is considered to be permanently taxonomically associated, i.e., the species that contains the biological type specimen( ...

is ''Axitectum vjushkovi''. ''A. vjushkovi'' is known from the

holotype A holotype is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism, known to have been used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of seve ...

PIN 1025/334, which consists of armor scute. It was found in the Vokhminskaya Formation of the Vokhmin Horizon and named in honour of Vyushkov, who was a Russian paleontologist. A second species, ''A. georgi'', was named by I.V. Novikov and M.A. Shishkin in

2000 File:2000 Events Collage.png, From left, clockwise: Protests against Bush v. Gore after the 2000 United States presidential election; Heads of state meet for the Millennium Summit; The International Space Station in its infant form as seen from ...

on the basis of another armor scute (holotype PIN 953/392). It was found in the Fedorovskaya Formation of the Yarenskian Superhorizon and named in honour of the geologist Georgii Ivanovich Blom. A third species, ''A. blomi'' (which also named in honour of G.I. Blom, in

), is now considered junior synonym of the type species. Other materials also referred to ''Axitectum''.

References

Chroniosuchians Triassic tetrapods Fossils of Russia {{paleo-amphibian-stub