''Euconcordia'' is an

extinct Extinction is the termination of an organism by the death of its Endling, last member. A taxon may become Functional extinction, functionally extinct before the death of its last member if it loses the capacity to Reproduction, reproduce and ...

genus Genus (; : genera ) is a taxonomic rank above species and below family (taxonomy), family as used in the biological classification of extant taxon, living and fossil organisms as well as Virus classification#ICTV classification, viruses. In bino ...

Late Carboniferous Late or LATE may refer to: Everyday usage * Tardy, or late, not being on time * Late (or the late) may refer to a person who is dead Music * Late (The 77s album), ''Late'' (The 77s album), 2000 * Late (Alvin Batiste album), 1993 * Late!, a pseudo ...

captorhinid Captorhinidae is an extinct family of tetrapods, traditionally considered primitive reptiles, known from the late Carboniferous to the Late Permian. They had a cosmopolitan distribution across Pangea. Description Captorhinids are a clade of ...

known from Greenwood County,

Kansas Kansas ( ) is a landlocked U.S. state, state in the Midwestern United States, Midwestern region of the United States. It borders Nebraska to the north; Missouri to the east; Oklahoma to the south; and Colorado to the west. Kansas is named a ...

of the

United States The United States of America (USA), also known as the United States (U.S.) or America, is a country primarily located in North America. It is a federal republic of 50 U.S. state, states and a federal capital district, Washington, D.C. The 48 ...

Description

''Euconcordia'' is known from the

holotype A holotype (Latin: ''holotypus'') is a single physical example (or illustration) of an organism used when the species (or lower-ranked taxon) was formally described. It is either the single such physical example (or illustration) or one of s ...

KUVP 8702a&b, well preserved

skull The skull, or cranium, is typically a bony enclosure around the brain of a vertebrate. In some fish, and amphibians, the skull is of cartilage. The skull is at the head end of the vertebrate. In the human, the skull comprises two prominent ...

dorsal Dorsal (from Latin ''dorsum'' ‘back’) may refer to: * Dorsal (anatomy), an anatomical term of location referring to the back or upper side of an organism or parts of an organism * Dorsal, positioned on top of an aircraft's fuselage The fus ...

view along with its counterpart, a partial preserved

braincase In human anatomy, the neurocranium, also known as the braincase, brainpan, brain-pan, or brainbox, is the upper and back part of the skull, which forms a protective case around the brain. In the human skull, the neurocranium includes the calv ...

ventral Standard anatomical terms of location are used to describe unambiguously the anatomy of humans and other animals. The terms, typically derived from Latin or Greek roots, describe something in its standard anatomical position. This position prov ...

view, and from the referred specimen KUVP 96/95, well preserved skull in ventral view and a poorly preserved dorsal counterpart. It was collected in the Hamilton Quarry, from the Calhouns Shale Formation of the Shawnee Group, dating to the Virgilian stage (or alternatively late

Kasimovian The Kasimovian is a geochronologic age or chronostratigraphic stage in the ICS geologic timescale. It is the third stage in the Pennsylvanian (late Carboniferous), lasting from to Ma.; 2004: ''A Geologic Time Scale 2004'', Cambridge Unive ...

to early

Gzhelian The Gzhelian ( ) is an age in the ICS geologic time scale or a stage in the stratigraphic column. It is the youngest stage of the Pennsylvanian, the youngest subsystem of the Carboniferous. The Gzhelian lasted from to Ma. It follows the Ka ...

stage) of the Late Pennsylvanian

Series Series may refer to: People with the name * Caroline Series (born 1951), English mathematician, daughter of George Series * George Series (1920–1995), English physicist Arts, entertainment, and media Music * Series, the ordered sets used i ...

, about 300

million years ago Million years ago, abbreviated as Mya, Myr (megayear) or Ma (megaannum), is a unit of time equal to (i.e. years), or approximately 31.6 teraseconds. Usage Myr is in common use in fields such as Earth science and cosmology. Myr is also used w ...

. ''Euconcordia'' was originally thought to be the basalmost known member of Captorhinidae. A novel phylogenic study of primitive reptile relationships by Müller & Reisz in 2006 recovered '' Thuringothyris'' as a sister taxon of the Captorhinidae, and therefore, by definition, ''Thuringothyris'' represents the basalmost known captorhinid.Muller, J. and Reisz, R.R. (2006). "The phylogeny of early eureptiles: Comparing parsimony and Bayesian approaches in the investigation of a basal fossil clade." ''Systematic Biology'', 55(3):503-511. The same results were obtained in later phylogenic analyses. ''Euconcordia'' is still the earliest known captorhinid as all other captorhinid taxa are known only from

Permian The Permian ( ) is a geologic period and System (stratigraphy), stratigraphic system which spans 47 million years, from the end of the Carboniferous Period million years ago (Mya), to the beginning of the Triassic Period 251.902 Mya. It is the s ...

deposits.

Etymology

''Euconcordia'' was first named by Johannes Müller and Robert R. Reisz in

2005 2005 was designated as the International Year for Sport and Physical Education and the International Year of Microcredit. The beginning of 2005 also marked the end of the International Decade of the World's Indigenous Peoples, Internationa ...

. Its original generic name was ''Concordia'' and the

type species In International_Code_of_Zoological_Nomenclature, 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 spe ...

is ''Concordia cunninghami''. The original generic name was derived from the

Latin Latin ( or ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic languages, Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally spoken by the Latins (Italic tribe), Latins in Latium (now known as Lazio), the lower Tiber area aroun ...

''concordia'', meaning "unity" or "harmony". The

specific name Specific name may refer to: * in Database management systems, a system-assigned name that is unique within a particular database In taxonomy, either of these two meanings, each with its own set of rules: * Specific name (botany), the two-part (bino ...

honors Christopher R. Cunningham for studying this taxon as part of his PhD thesis on the Hamilton Quarry. The original generic name turned out to be preoccupied by extant hippolytid

crustacea Crustaceans (from Latin meaning: "those with shells" or "crusted ones") are invertebrate animals that constitute one group of arthropods that are traditionally a part of the subphylum Crustacea (), a large, diverse group of mainly aquatic arthrop ...

n ''Concordia'' Kingsley, 1880 (currently considered a

junior synonym In taxonomy, the scientific classification of living organisms, a synonym is an alternative scientific name for the accepted scientific name of a taxon. The botanical and zoological codes of nomenclature treat the concept of synonymy differently. ...

of '' Latreutes'' Stimpson, 1860). Reisz, Haridy & Müller (2016) coined a replacement name ''Euconcordia''.

References

{{Taxonbar, from=Q5158946 Carboniferous reptiles Carboniferous reptiles of North America Greenwood County, Kansas Fossil taxa described in 2016 Captorhinidae Prehistoric reptile genera Paleontology in Kansas