Pelorocephalus
Extinct genus of amphibians
title: "Pelorocephalus" type: doc version: 1 created: 2026-02-28 author: "Wikipedia contributors" status: active scope: public tags: ["chigutisauridae", "carnian-genera", "triassic-temnospondyls-of-south-america", "late-triassic-animals-of-south-america", "triassic-argentina", "fossils-of-argentina", "ischigualasto-formation", "fossil-taxa-described-in-1944", "taxa-named-by-ángel-cabrera"] description: "Extinct genus of amphibians" topic_path: "geography/argentina" source: "https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Pelorocephalus" license: "CC BY-SA 4.0" wikipedia_page_id: 0 wikipedia_revision_id: 0
::summary Extinct genus of amphibians ::
| fossil_range = Carnian | image = Pelorocephalus tunuyaensis.JPG | image_caption = Skull of Pelorocephalus mendozensis | taxon = Pelorocephalus | authority = Cabrera 1944 | type_species = Pelorocephalus mendozensis | type_species_authority = Cabrera 1944 | subdivision_ranks = Species | subdivision =
- P. cacheutensis (Rusconi 1953) (originally Chigutisaurus cacheutensis)
- P. ischigualastensis Bonaparte 1975
- P. mendozensis Cabrera 1944 (type)
- P. tenax (Rusconi 1949) (originally Chigutisaurus tenax) ::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/2/21/Pelorocephalus1DB.jpg" caption="Life restoration of ''Pelorocephalus tenax''"] ::
::figure[src="https://upload.wikimedia.org/wikipedia/commons/d/d9/Pelorocephalus_mendozensis_life_restoration.jpg" caption="Life restoration of ''Pelorocephalus mendozensis''"] ::
Pelorocephalus (meaning "monstrous head" in Greek) is an extinct genus of chigutisaurid temnospondyls. It is known from the Late Triassic (Carnian) Cacheutá Formation of the Cuyo Basin and the Ischigualasto Formation of the Ischigualasto-Villa Unión Basin, both in northwestern Argentina. Four species are currently recognized: the type species P. mendozensis, which was named in 1944, P. tenax, which was named in 1949 as a species of Chigutisaurus and reassigned to Pelorocephalus in 1999, and P. cacheutensis, which was named in 1953 as another species of Chigutisaurus and reassigned to Pelorocephalus along with P. tenax. A fourth species, P. ischigualastensis, was named in 1975 after the formation it was found in. The species P. tunuyanensis was named in 1948 but has since been synonymized with P. mendozensis.
Phylogeny
Pelorocephalus in a cladogram of Brachyopoidea adapted from Ruta et al. (2007):
|label1=Brachyopoidea |1={{clade |label1=Brachyopidae |1={{clade |1={{clade |1=Sinobrachyops |2=Xenobrachyops}} |2={{clade |1=Banksiops |2=Batrachosaurus |3={{clade |1=Vanastega |2=Vigilius}} |4=Batrachosuchus}} }} |label2=Chigutisauridae |2={{clade |1=Chigutisaurus |2={{clade |1={{clade |1=Compsocerops |2=Kuttycephalus}} |2={{clade |1=Pelorocephalus |2=Siderops
References
References
- (2023-08-03). "A new chigutisaurid (Brachyopoidea, Temnospondyli) with soft tissue preservation from the Triassic Sydney Basin, New South Wales, Australia". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
- (2000). "A phylogeny of the Brachyopoidea (Temnospondyli, Stereospondyli)". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology.
- Ruta, M.. (2007). "A supertree of Temnospondyli: cladogenetic patterns in the most species-rich group of early tetrapods". Proceedings of the Royal Society B.
::callout[type=info title="Wikipedia Source"] This article was imported from Wikipedia and is available under the Creative Commons Attribution-ShareAlike 4.0 License. Content has been adapted to SurfDoc format. Original contributors can be found on the article history page. ::