Paleontology in South Africa

paleoanthropological site near Johannesburg, South Africa

Lycosuchus is a genus of early therocephalian (an extinct type of therapsid, the group that modern mammals belong to) that lived roughly 260–258 million years ago, straddling the boundary of the Middle and Late Permian period, from what is now the Karoo Basin of South Africa. The type and only species is L. vanderrieti, named by paleontologist Robert Broom in 1903. Lycosuchus is known from a handful of well-preserved specimens mostly preserving the skull and lower jaw; the holotype specimen itself being a nearly complete and undistorted occluded skull and jaws. Other specimens have revealed mo

Simorhinella is an extinct genus of therocephalian therapsids from the Guadalupian, or Middle Permian, of South Africa. It is includes only a single species, Simorhinella baini, named by South African paleontologist Robert Broom in 1915. Broom named Simorhinella on the basis of a single small fossil from the British Museum of Natural History collected in 1878 that includes the skull and jaws from the eye sockets forward of a young juvenile. The skull is unusual in that it has an extremely short and broad snout, unlike the longer and narrower snouts of most other early therocephalians. Because

lithostratigraphic layer in South Africa

Triassic/Jurassic geological group in the Karoo Supergroup in South Africa