#pareiasaur

[herpsandbirds]

Painting of Scutosaurus and Inostrancevia (1966) by Zdeněk Burian

Scutosaurus ("shield lizard") is an extinct genus of pareiasaur  paraeiasaurparareptiles. Its genus name refers to large plates of armor scattered across its body. It was a large anapsid reptile that, unlike most reptiles, held its legs underneath its body to support its great weight. Fossils have been found in the Sokolki Assemblage Zone of the Malokinelskaya Formation in European Russia, close to the Ural Mountains, dating to the late Permian (Lopingian) between 259 and 252 million years ago...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Scutosaurus

Inostrancevia is an extinct genus of large carnivorous therapsids which lived during the Late Permian. The first-known fossils of this gorgonopsian were discovered in the context of a long series of excavations carried out from 1899 to 1914 in the Northern Dvina, Russia. Possessing a skull measuring approximately 40 to 60 cm (16 to 24 in) long depending on the species, all for a body length reaching 3 to 3.5 m (9.8 to 11.5 ft), Inostrancevia is the largest known gorgonopsian...

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Inostrancevia

[a-dinosaur-a-day]

PSA

This is a Parasaur, a kind of early reptile not closely related to dinosaurs from 258 million years ago:

This is a Parasaurolophus, a kind of duck-billed dinosaur from 75 million years ago:

Now You Know! Thank you!

[dromaeosaurid]

Skeleton of Pariasaurus bainii (now Bradysaurus bainii) from A Guide to the Fossil Reptiles and Fishes in the Department of Geology and Paleontology in the British Museum (Natural History), 1896.

[252mya]

Scutosaurus unisex t-shirt

Scutosaurus is one the better-known pareiasaurs, the first herbivorous reptiles to reach rather large sizes.

252mya.com/scuto

Art by Greco Westermann

[typhlonectes]

Bunostegos ("knobbly [skull] roof")

... is an extinct genus of pareiasaur parareptile from the Late Permian of the Agadez Region in Niger. The type species, Bunostegos akokanensis, was named from the Moradi Formation in 2003. It was a cow-sized animal with a distinctive skull that had large bony knobs, similar in form to those of other pareiasaurs but far larger. The species appears to have lived in a desert in the centre of the supercontinent of Pangaea.

Analysis of the limb bones (including the scapulocoracoid, humerus, radius, ulna, pelvis, and femur) was published in 2015, and revealed that Bunostegos walked upright on four limbs, with the body held above ground. This new information directly suggests that it could be the first tetrapod with a fully erect gait...

Read more: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bunostegos

illustration of B. akokanensis by DiBgd

[alphynix]

Bunostegos akokanensis, from the Late Permian of Niger (~260 mya). About 2.5m long (8′2″), similar in size to a modern cow, it was a member of a group known as the pareiasaurs -- stocky herbivorous reptile-relatives with osteoderm armor in their skin and knobbly bony nodules on their skulls.

The anatomy of its limb bones suggest it walked fully upright, with its legs held vertically under its body. This sort of posture has independently evolved multiple times in different tetrapod lineages, but Bunostegos is one of the earliest known examples.

[josephjatczakillustrator]

Scutosaurus WIP

[typhlonectes]

The 'ugliest fossil reptiles' who roamed China

Date: February 19, 2016 Source: University of Bristol

Summary:  Long before the dinosaurs, hefty herbivores called pareiasaurs ruled Earth. Now, for the first time, a detailed investigation of all Chinese specimens of these creatures -- often described as the 'ugliest fossil reptiles' -- has been published by a palaeontologist.

Pareiasaurs have been reported from South Africa, Europe (Russia, Scotland, Germany), Asia (China), and South America, but it is not known whether there were distinct groups on each of these continents.

In a new study published in the Zoological Journal of the Linnean Society, Professor Mike Benton of Bristol's School of Earth Sciences shows there are close similarities between Chinese fossils and those found in Russia and South Africa, indicating that the huge herbivores were able to travel around the world despite their lumbering movement...

(read more: Science Daily)

illustrations: Shihtienfenia Skeleton via University of Bristol; Scutosaurus karpinskii by Nobu Tamura