Ennatosaurus tecton Synapsida: Pelycosauria: Caseidae Locality: Pinega River, Arkhangelsk Region, northern European Russia Age: Late Permian, 260 million years ago Meaning of name: "The ninth reptile" Represented by a skeleton of a juvenile individual, this was a primitive, herbivorous reptile, in the family Caseidae. Although large numbers of individuals of this species have been found concentrated in a sandstone layer at the Pinega Locality, no other species occur there. Accumulations of numerous individuals of a single species suggest that a group of animals living together were killed by a single event. The site where these fossils occurred is thought to have been a beach of a very large island at the time the animals were alive. Ennatosaurus tecton was not a therapsid. Rather, it was an herbivorous member of the pelycosaurs, the more primitive group of mammal-like reptiles out of which the therapsids evolved. |
