A new dicynodont from Triassic South Africa

[Logo7]

A new genus of kannemeyeriiform dicynodont has been described from Middle Triassic remains from the Cynognathus Assemblage Zone of the Beaufort Group of the Burgersdorp Formation of South Africa. The new genus has been given the name Ufudocyclops mukanelai ("Mukanela's one-eyed tortoise"), with the genus name originating from "ufudo," the Xhosa word for "tortoise," which is used to describe the animal's toothless, tortoise-like beak, and "cyclops", after the one-eyed mythological giant, which is used to describe the large pineal eye opening on the top of the animal's head, and the species name originating from Pepson Mukanela, the paleontologist who prepared the specimens used to describe this new genus, in honor of his many years working as a preparator in the Evolutionary Studies Institute. The remains used to describe this new genus were originally believed to belong to the dicynodont genus Angonisaurus, but the new paper reveals that they actually belong to their own genus. The description of this genus suggests that Middle Triassic assemblages like the Cynognathus Assemblage Zone have very high basinal provincialism, although it is unclear at the moment wether or not this is due to temporal or geographic factors. Here is an image of the skull remains used to describe the new genus and a link to the paper describing it.



Paper (abstract only): https://www.tandfonline.com/doi/abs/10.1080/02724634.2019.1596921?tokenDomain=eprints&tokenAccess=a7sYsThF73NU7CgHnqTY&forwardService=showFullText&target=10.1080%2F02724634.2019.1596921&doi=10.1080%2F02724634.2019.1596921&doi=10.1080%2F02724634.2019.1596921&doi=10.1080%2F02724634.2019.1596921&journalCode=ujvp20

[Stuckasaurus (Dino Dad Reviews)]

How large is the opening of the pineal eye?? That sounds like a pretty interesting feature!

[Logo7]

How large is the opening of the pineal eye?? That sounds like a pretty interesting feature!

I couldn't tell you, as I don't have access to the full paper. It must be pretty big though, as the paper's abstract and results describes it as "enormous."

[Halichoeres]

How large is the opening of the pineal eye?? That sounds like a pretty interesting feature!

I couldn't tell you, as I don't have access to the full paper. It must be pretty big though, as the paper's abstract and results describes it as "enormous."

It's about 3cm long, a little less than that wide. Here's a photo and diagram from the paper. Scale bar is 5cm.