''Eudibamus'' 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 ...

biped Bipedalism is a form of terrestrial locomotion where an organism moves by means of its two rear limbs or legs. An animal or machine that usually moves in a bipedal manner is known as a biped , meaning 'two feet' (from Latin ''bis'' 'double' ...

bolosaurid

ankyramorph Ankyramorpha ("anchor forms") is an extinct clade of procolophonomorph parareptiles which lived between the early Cisuralian epoch (middle Sakmarian stage) to the latest Triassic period (latest Rhaetian stage) of Africa, Antarctica, Asia, Austral ...

parareptile known from the Free State of Thuringia of central

Germany Germany, officially the Federal Republic of Germany (FRG),, is a country in Central Europe. It is the most populous member state of the European Union. Germany lies between the Baltic and North Sea to the north and the Alps to the sou ...

. It had a very small size reaching only 25-26 cm in length.

Discovery

''Eudibamus'' is known only 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 ...

MNG 8852, an articulated and almost complete cranial and

postcrania Postcrania (postcranium, adjective: postcranial) in zoology and vertebrate paleontology is all or part of the skeleton apart from the skull. Frequently, fossil remains, e.g. of dinosaurs or other extinct tetrapods, consist of partial or isolated s ...

l skeleton. It was collected from the uppermost part of the

Tambach Formation The Tambach Formation is an Early Permian-age geologic formation in central Germany. It consists of red to brown-colored sedimentary rocks (red beds) such as conglomerate, sandstone, and mudstone, and is the oldest portion of the Upper Rotliegend ...

, dating to the Artinskian stage of the Late Cisuralian Series (or alternatively upper Rotliegend), about 284–279.5

million years ago The abbreviation Myr, "million years", is a unit of a quantity of (i.e. ) years, or 31.556926 teraseconds. Usage Myr (million years) is in common use in fields such as Earth science and cosmology. Myr is also used with Mya (million years ago). ...

. It was found in the lowermost formational unit of the Upper Rotliegend Group or Series of the Bromacker Quarry, the middle part of the Thuringian Forest, near the village of Tambach-Dietharz. ''Eudibamus'' is claimed to be the first bipedal

vertebrate Vertebrates () comprise all animal taxon, taxa within the subphylum Vertebrata () (chordates with vertebral column, backbones), including all mammals, birds, reptiles, amphibians, and fish. Vertebrates represent the overwhelming majority of the ...

Etymology

''Eudibamus'' was first named by David S. Berman,

Robert R. Reisz Robert Rafael Reisz is a Canadian paleontologist and specialist in the study of early amniote and tetrapod evolution. Research career Reisz received his B.Sc. (1969), M.Sc. (1971) and Ph.D. (1975) from McGill University as Robert L. Carroll ...

, Diane Scott, Amy C. Henrici, Stuart S. Sumida and Thomas Martens 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 ...

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 ''Eudibamus cursoris''. The generic name means 'typical two-footed', from

Greek Greek may refer to: Greece Anything of, from, or related to Greece, a country in Southern Europe: *Greeks, an ethnic group. *Greek language, a branch of the Indo-European language family. **Proto-Greek language, the assumed last common ancestor ...

''eu-di-bāmos'', based on ''bainō'' ‘to go’). 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 ...

is derived from the

Latin Latin (, or , ) is a classical language belonging to the Italic branch of the Indo-European languages. Latin was originally a dialect spoken in the lower Tiber area (then known as Latium) around present-day Rome, but through the power ...

word 'cursor', for 'runner'.

References

Procolophonomorphs Prehistoric reptile genera Permian reptiles of Europe Fossil taxa described in 2000 {{permian-reptile-stub