Word: cynodont
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Dates: during 1937-1937
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From the early and relatively short-lived off-shoots of the main mammalian trunk, the Harvard Paleontologists assembled many specimens. Of the family of cynodonts,--small, dog-sized, carnivorus lizards,--they obtained the finest fossils ever found in the Americas. The collection includes a large number of complete cynodont skeletons and skulls in good preservation. The world's chief cynodont deposits are in South Africa, and hitherto only fragmentary skulls of this family have been found in South America...
...another mammal-like family, the herbivorous "two-tusker," or dicynodont, the Harvard party obtained a number of good skulls and skeletons. These peaceful lizards, six feet or so in length, were among the commonest reptiles in the Triassic period, but were rapidly killed off, probably by their meat-eating cynodont relatives and other carnivorous forms...
...lizard, about fifteen inches long, belongs to the order of thecodonts, whose evolution developed some of the greatest dinosaures. Another specimen, an oddly crushed reptile skull, is believed to be chasmatosaurid, belonging to a carnivorous alligator type, probably about twelve feet long. Other new animals were found in the cynodont, dicynodont, and rhynchosaur groups...
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