''Riebeeckosaurus'' is an extinct
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 ...
of
tapinocephalian
therapsids from the
Guadalupian
The Guadalupian is the second and middle Series (stratigraphy), series/Epoch (geology), epoch of the Permian. The Guadalupian was preceded by the Cisuralian and followed by the Lopingian. It is named after the Guadalupe Mountains of New Mexico an ...
epoch of
''Tapinocephalus'' Assemblage Zone, lower Beaufort Beds of the
Karoo
The Karoo ( ; from the Afrikaans borrowing of the South Khoekhoe Khoemana (also known as !Orakobab or Korana) word is a semidesert natural region of South Africa. No exact definition of what constitutes the Karoo is available, so its extent is ...
, in
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 ...
. Only two skulls are known from the type genus.
It was a herbivorous, medium-sized ( in length, in mass)
dinocephalia
Dinocephalians (terrible heads) are a clade of large-bodied early therapsids that flourished in the Early and Middle Permian between 279.5 and 260 million years ago (Ma), but became extinct during the Capitanian mass extinction event. ...
n, with a very long, slender snout and a narrow intertemporal region with a narrow sagittal crest.
In 2013, Saniye Güven and colleagues proposed that the genus ''Avenantia'' is
synonymous
A synonym is a word, morpheme, or phrase that means precisely or nearly the same as another word, morpheme, or phrase in a given language. For example, in the English language, the words ''begin'', ''start'', ''commence'', and ''initiate'' are a ...
with ''Riebeeckosaurus'', representing an immature individual.
See also
*
List of therapsids
This list of therapsids is an attempt to create a comprehensive listing of all Genus, genera that have ever been included in the Therapsida excluding mammals and purely vernacular terms. The list includes all commonly accepted genera, but also gene ...
References
The main groups of non-mammalian synapsids at Mikko's Phylogeny Archive
External links
at Kheper
Tapinocephalia
Prehistoric therapsid genera
Guadalupian synapsids of Africa
Fossil taxa described in 1952
Taxa named by Lieuwe Dirk Boonstra
{{Paleo-therapsid-stub