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 ...
procolophonid
Procolophonidae is an extinct family of small, lizard-like parareptiles known from the Late Permian to Late Triassic that were distributed across Pangaea, having been reported from Europe, North America, China, South Africa, South America, Antarc ...
parareptile
Parareptilia ("near-reptiles") is an extinct group of Basal (phylogenetics), basal Sauropsida, sauropsids ("Reptile, reptiles"), traditionally considered the sister taxon to Eureptilia (the group that likely contains all living reptiles and birds ...
from
Early Triassic
The Early Triassic is the first of three epochs of the Triassic Period of the geologic timescale. It spans the time between 251.9 Ma and Ma (million years ago). Rocks from this epoch are collectively known as the Lower Triassic Series, which ...
(early
Olenekian
In the geologic timescale, the Olenekian is an age (geology), age in the Early Triassic epoch (geology), epoch; in chronostratigraphy, it is a stage (stratigraphy), stage in the Lower Triassic series (stratigraphy), series. It spans the time betw ...
stage) deposits of Eastern
Cape Province
The Province of the Cape of Good Hope (), commonly referred to as the Cape Province () and colloquially as The Cape (), was a province in the Union of South Africa and subsequently the Republic of South Africa. It encompassed the old Cape Co ...
,
South Africa
South Africa, officially the Republic of South Africa (RSA), is the Southern Africa, southernmost country in Africa. Its Provinces of South Africa, nine provinces are bounded to the south by of coastline that stretches along the Atlantic O ...
. It 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 ...
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 ...
and partial
postcranium
The postcranium ("behind the cranium"; plural: postcrania) or postcranial skeleton in zoology and vertebrate paleontology is the skeleton apart from the skull. The postcranium encompasses the axial skeleton, which includes the entirety of the verte ...
, which was first assigned to the more derived ''
Procolophon trigoniceps
''Procolophon'' (from , 'before' and , 'summit') is a genus of lizard-like procolophonidae, procolophonid Parareptilia, parareptiles that first appeared in the Early Triassic (Induan) of South Africa, Brazil, and Antarctica. It persisted throu ...
''. It was collected by the South African palaeontologist,
James W. Kitching
James William Kitching (6 February 1922 – 24 December 2003) was a South African vertebrate palaeontologist and regarded as one of the world’s greatest fossil finders.
Career
His work in the southern hemisphere, including Antarctica, led ...
Katberg Formation
The Katberg Formation is a geological formation that is found in the Beaufort Group, a major geological group that forms part of the greater Karoo Supergroup in South Africa. The Katberg Formation is the lowermost geological formation of the Tar ...
of the
Beaufort Group
The Beaufort Group is the third of the main subdivisions of the Karoo Supergroup in South Africa. It is composed of a lower Adelaide Subgroup and an upper Tarkastad Subgroup. It follows conformably after the Ecca Group and unconformably under ...
(
Karoo Basin
The Karoo Supergroup is the most widespread stratigraphic unit in Africa south of the Kalahari Desert. The supergroup consists of a sequence of units, mostly of nonmarine origin, deposited between the Late Carboniferous and Early Jurassic, a per ...
) and referred to the uppermost
Lystrosaurus Assemblage Zone
The ''Lystrosaurus'' Assemblage Zone is a tetrapod assemblage zone or biozone which correlates to the upper Adelaide and lower Tarkastad Subgroups of the Beaufort Group, a fossiliferous and geologically important geological Group of the Karoo Su ...
. It was first named by Juan Carlos Cisneros in
2008
2008 was designated as:
*International Year of Languages
*International Year of Planet Earth
*International Year of the Potato
*International Year of Sanitation
The Great Recession, a worldwide recession which began in 2007, continued throu ...
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 ''Kitchingnathus untabeni''. The generic name honours James W. Kitching, and "gnathus", from
Greek
Greek may refer to:
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 of all kno ...
''gnathos'' meaning
mandible
In jawed vertebrates, the mandible (from the Latin ''mandibula'', 'for chewing'), lower jaw, or jawbone is a bone that makes up the lowerand typically more mobilecomponent of the mouth (the upper jaw being known as the maxilla).
The jawbone i ...
. 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 ...
meaning "from the hill", in
isiZulu
Zulu ( ), or isiZulu as an endonym, is a Southern Bantu language of the Nguni branch spoken in, and indigenous to, Southern Africa. Nguni dialects are regional or social varieties of the Nguni language, distinguished by vocabulary, pronunciatio ...
, is in reference to the locality where the fossil was found.
Phylogeny
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 ...