Ennatosaurus tecton
Ennatosaurus tecton - Efremov, 1956 - skeleton
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.
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