''Aelurognathus'' 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 ...

gorgonopsia Gorgonopsia (from the Greek Gorgon, a mythological beast, and 'aspect') is an extinct clade of Saber-toothed predator, sabre-toothed therapsids from the Middle Permian, Middle to the Upper Permian, roughly between 270 and 252 million years ago. ...

n therapsids from the

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 ...

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 ...

and

Zambia Zambia, officially the Republic of Zambia, is a landlocked country at the crossroads of Central Africa, Central, Southern Africa, Southern and East Africa. It is typically referred to being in South-Central Africa or Southern Africa. It is bor ...

Discovery

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 ''Aelurognathus tigriceps'', originally named ''Scymnognathus tigriceps'' by South African paleontologists

Robert Broom Robert Broom Fellow of the Royal Society, FRS FRSE (30 November 1866 6 April 1951) was a British- South African medical doctor and palaeontologist. He qualified as a medical practitioner in 1895 and received his DSc in 1905 from the University ...

and Sydney H. Haughton in 1913, and later assigned to the new genus ''Aelurognathus'' by Haughton in 1924. ''Scymnognathus parringtoni'' von Huene, 1950, previously assigned to ''Aelurognathus'', is now classified as a species of '' Sauroctonus''.Gebauer E I, 2014. Re-assessment of the taxonomic position of the specimen GPIT/RE/7113 (Sauroctonus parringtoni comb. nov., Gorgonopsia). In: Kammerer C F, Angielczyk K D, Fröbisch J eds. Early Evolutionary History of the Synapsida. Dordrecht: Springer. 185−207. ''Aelurognathus nyasaensis'' Haughton, 1926 is not referable to the genus.Kammerer CF. (2016) Systematics of the Rubidgeinae (Therapsida: Gorgonopsia) PeerJ 4:e1608 https://doi.org/10.7717/peerj.1608

Palaeobiology

A broken tooth beside the skeleton of a

dicynodont Dicynodontia is an extinct clade of anomodonts, an extinct type of non-mammalian therapsid. Dicynodonts were herbivores that typically bore a pair of tusks, hence their name, which means 'two dog tooth'. Members of the group possessed a horny, t ...

from the ''Tropidostoma'' Assemblage Zone has been attributed to ''Aelurognathus'', indicating that it scavenged. The bones of the back of the skeleton are the most scattered, suggesting that the ''Aelurognathus'' individuals fed on the rear of the carcass, removing the hind limbs to reach the soft underside. The small

incisor Incisors (from Latin ''incidere'', "to cut") are the front teeth present in most mammals. They are located in the premaxilla above and on the mandible below. Humans have a total of eight (two on each side, top and bottom). Opossums have 18, wher ...

teeth of ''Aelurognathus'' indicate that it was not able to crush bone but more likely stripped flesh from its prey like the modern-day wild dog ''

Lycaon pictus The African wild dog (''Lycaon pictus''), also called painted dog and Cape hunting dog, is a wild Caninae, canine native to sub-Saharan Africa. It is the largest wild canine in Africa, and the only Neontology#Extant taxa versus extinct taxa, ex ...

''. Bite marks on the bones of the skeleton were unlikely to have been made by ''Aelurognathus'' and may be an indication that another predator killed the dicynodont.

Classification

Below is a

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 ...

from the phylogenetic analysis of Gebauer (2007): Leontocephalus

References

Gorgonopsia Prehistoric therapsid genera Permian synapsids of Africa Fossil taxa described in 1924 Taxa named by Sidney H. Haughton {{Paleo-Therapsid-stub