Catactegenys

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Catactegenys
Temporal range: Late Cretaceous (late Campanian)
Scientific classification Red Pencil Icon.png
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Reptilia
Order: Squamata
Family: Xantusiidae
Genus:Catactegenys
Nydam et al., 2013
Type species
Catactegenys solaster
Nydam et al., 2013

Catactegenys is an extinct genus of xantusiid lizard from the Late Cretaceous of Texas. The type species, Catactegenys solaster, was named in 2013 from the late-Campanian-age Aguja Formation in Brewster County. The genus name means "breaker jaw" in Greek, a reference to its inferred ability to break hard shells with its jaws as an adaptation for a durophagous diet, and the species name means "lone star", a reference to Texas, the "lone star state". Catactegenys is known only from jaw bones, but the size of these bones indicates that it was larger than all other known xantusiids. The teeth are robust and heavily worn, suggesting that Catactegenys may have eaten hard-shelled molluscs, which are common in the Aguja Formation. [1]

A genus is a taxonomic rank used in the biological classification of living and fossil organisms, as well as viruses, in biology. In the hierarchy of biological classification, genus comes above species and below family. In binomial nomenclature, the genus name forms the first part of the binomial species name for each species within the genus.

Lizard suborder of reptiles

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The Late Cretaceous is the younger of two epochs into which the Cretaceous period is divided in the geologic timescale. Rock strata from this epoch form the Upper Cretaceous series. The Cretaceous is named after the white limestone known as chalk which occurs widely in northern France and is seen in the white cliffs of south-eastern England, and which dates from this time.

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References

  1. Nydam, Randall L.; Rowe, Timothy B.; Cifelli, Richard L. (2013). "Lizards and snakes of the Terlingua Local Fauna (late Campanian), Aguja Formation, Texas, with comments on the distribution of paracontemporaneous squamates throughout the Western Interior of North America". Journal of Vertebrate Paleontology. 33 (5): 1081. doi:10.1080/02724634.2013.760467.