Karaurus

Karaurus
Temporal range: Late Jurassic
Life reconstruction of Karaurus sharovi
Reconstructed skeletal mount at the Baoding Natural History Museum
Scientific classification Edit this classification
Kingdom: Animalia
Phylum: Chordata
Class: Amphibia
Clade: Caudata
Family: †Karauridae
Genus: †Karaurus
Ivachnenko, 1978
Species:
†K. sharovi
Binomial name
†Karaurus sharovi
Ivachnenko, 1978
Fossil specimen

Karaurus (meaning head-tail) is an extinct monospecific genus of stem-group salamander (Caudata) from the Middle to Late Jurassic (Callovian–Kimmeridgian) Karabastau Formation of Kazakhstan. It is one of the oldest salamanders known.

Karaurus was large for a Jurassic salamander, about 20 centimetres (7.9 in) long, and very similar anatomically to modern salamanders. Karaurus is thought to have fed using suction feeding via the enlargement of the buccal cavity on small fish and invertebrates, with the well-developed palatal dentition (teeth on the roof of the mouth) and marginal teeth mandatory to grasp prey. Karaurus is thought to form a clade with Kokartus from the Middle Jurassic (Bathonian) of Kyrgyzstan, and Marmorerpeton from the Bathonian of the United Kingdom, together forming the Karauridae, which are closely related to crown salamanders. Like other members of Karauridae, Karaurus is neotenic.

This page is issued from Wikipedia. The text is available under Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 4.0 unless otherwise noted. Additional terms may apply for the media files.