Kataigidodon, a new cynodont from Arizona, USA

[Halichoeres]

Meet Kataigidodon venetus, the name means "blue thunderstorm-tooth" in a mixture of Greek and Latin, after a place called Thunderstorm Ridge and the Blue Mesa geological member where it was found. It comes from Petrified Forest National Park in northern Arizona, part of an interesting Upper Triassic ecosystem (223-220 million years ago).

The material is pretty scrappy, not as nice as the Nshimbodon that was just published from Zambia. But these fragments of jawbone are enough to know that eucynodonts were present in this environment.



Paper (paywall): https://doi.org/10.1098/rsbl.2020.0631

[Newt]

Score!


It's curious how rare and scrappy cynodont fossils are in the North American Upper Triassic - but widespread. There's Pachygenelus from the Dockum, Redondagnathus from the uppermost Chinle, Arctotraversodon from the Wolfville, a handful of dromatheriids from the Chatham Group - all fragmentary and most very rare. I wonder if cynodonts were inhabiting undersampled habitats.


Still waiting on the Petrified Forest azendohsaur to be published. That ecosystem was just crazy diverse!

[Gothmog the Baryonyx]

That's an interesting discovery, nice name too. How far into the Upper Triassic was this one roughly?

[Newt]

The Blue Mesa Member is considered early-to-mid Norian, part of the Adamanian land vertebrate "faunachron". This animal would have been more or less contemporaneous with Postosuchus, Placerias, Poposaurus, Shuvosaurus, Trilophosaurus, Vancleavea, the aetosaurs Desmatosuchus and Tecovasuchus, the phytosaurs Smilosuchus and Machaeroprosopus, the dinosauromorph Dromomeron, the basal theropod Chindesaurus, and the coelophysoid Camposaurus. It predates the famous Ghost Ranch Coelophysis Quarry.

[Halichoeres]

Still waiting on the Petrified Forest azendohsaur to be published. That ecosystem was just crazy diverse!

I didn't know there was one! That's excellent news, I'll be on the lookout.

[Newt]

Still waiting on the Petrified Forest azendohsaur to be published. That ecosystem was just crazy diverse!

I didn't know there was one! That's excellent news, I'll be on the lookout.

I got to visit Petrified Forest last year. A fossil preparator at the museum there was working on it; she said it would be published soon. That's all I know!