Candelariodon, de Oliveira, Schultz, Soares & Rodrigues, 2011

Oliveira, Téo Veiga De, Schultz, Cesar Leandro, Soares, Marina Bento & Rodrigues, Carlos Nunes, 2011, A new carnivorous cynodont (Synapsida, Therapsida) from the Brazilian Middle Triassic (Santa Maria Formation): Candelariodon barberenai gen. et sp. nov., Zootaxa 3027, pp. 19-28 : 22

Genus Candelariodon gen. nov.

Type species. Candelariodon barberenai sp. nov.

Etymology. Named after the city of Candelária , where the holotype was collected; “odon” derives from the Greek “ odoús ”, meaning “tooth”.

Distribution and Age. Lower half of the Santa Maria Formation (Santa Maria 1 Sequence from Santa Maria Supersequence), in the characteristic levels of the Dinodontosaurus AZ (sensu Abdala & Ribeiro 2010) ( Fig. 3 ), probably Ladinian in age. The outcrop where the fossil was collected is in Mr. Ronaldo Becker’s property, in the Pinheiro region, municipality of Candelária , circa 200km west from Porto Alegre, Rio Grande do Sul, Brazil ( Fig. 1 B).

Generic diagnosis. The genus include eucynodont with the following combination of characters: dentary without angular process; large coronoid process of the dentary overlapping laterally to the most distal postcanines; wide masseteric fossa; fused mandibular symphysis; splenial present but reduced (not vestigial); large distal lower incisor taller than postcanines; incisor margins without any kind of serration or denticulation; lower canine large or very large (broken at base); alveoli for eight postcanines (pc); pc1 and 2 apparently with 2 cusps, a (main) and c (distal accessory); pc3 and 4 buccolingually expanded with 3 cusps, a, c, and d (lingual accessory); pc4 with two small mesiolingual cingular cusps; pc5 buccolingually expanded, with cusps organized in buccal and lingual rows separated by shallow occlusal basin, each with four low cusps; maxillary postcanine sectorial, with four mesiodistally aligned cusps (B, A, C, and D) and two small mesiobuccal cingular cusps. See below for complete description.

Figures

FIGURE 1. Geographic location and stratigraphic section of the outcrop. A, Rio Grande do Sul State placement in South America and Brazil. The approximate position of the city of Candelária is indicated by the black star. B, road map with arrow pointing to the city of Candelária, where the material was collected. C, stratigraphic section of the Sanga do Zé outcrop. The scale is in meters and the arrow points to the vertebrate-bearing level (modified from Bertoni-Machado et al. 2008). Abbreviations: fs, fine sandstone; m, mudstone.

FIGURE 3. Stratigraphy of the southern Brazilian Triassic. A, sequence stratigraphy of the Triassic units outcropping in Rio Grande do Sul State. B, bio- and litostratigraphic relationships between Middle and Upper Triassic units from Brazil and Argentina [modified from Zerfass et al. (2003), Rubert and Schultz (2004) and Soares et al. (2011)].