Open AccessI—On the structure of the skull in the mammal-like reptiles of the suborder Therocephalia
Author(s) -
R. Broom
Publication year - 1936
Publication title -
philosophical transactions of the royal society of london. series b, biological sciences
Language(s) - English
Resource type - Journals
eISSN - 2054-0280
pISSN - 0080-4622
DOI - 10.1098/rstb.1936.0001
Subject(s) - mammal , beak , tortoise , genus , zoology , biology , skull , paleontology
The first-known mammal-like reptiles were discovered by Andrew Geddes Bain (1845) in the Karroo Beds of South Africa about a hundred years ago. The large majority of the species he discovered belong to the Anomodont group, of which Dicynodon is the best-known genus—characterized by having a tortoise-like beak with or without permanent-growing, large, upper canines. Carnivorous types are very much rarer than the vegetarian Anomodonts, and Bain was successful in getting only comparatively few specimens, and most of these in a very unsatisfactory condition. Most of his collecting was done in what we now regard as the middle zones of the Karroo, and the majority of his specimens belong to the suborders Gorgonopsia and Cynodontia.