Belodon
Extinct genus of reptiles
Belodon (meaning "arrow tooth") is a dubious genus of phytosaur, a crocodile-like reptile that lived during the Triassic. Its fossils have been found in Europe, North America, and India. The type species, Belodon plieningeri, was named by prolific German paleontologist Christian Erich Hermann von Meyer in 1844. Its type specimen is based on several teeth.
Many other species were also named, among them Belodon buceros (named by Edward Drinker Cope in 1881), Belodon kapffi (von Meyer, 1861), Belodon lepturus (Cope, 1870), Belodon priscus (originally described as Compsosaurus priscus by Joseph Leidy in 1856), Belodon scolopax (Cope, 1881), and Belodon validus (Othniel Charles Marsh, 1893). It is now known that phytosaur teeth aren't of taxonomic utility, and thus, Belodon is an invalid species, with several of the specimens referred to it now considered either Mystriosuchus, Machaeroprosopus, or Nicrosaurus.
Sources and credits
This article is adapted from the Wikipedia article “Belodon”, written by its contributors and licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0. Fathomly has changed the layout, removed citation markers, navigation and maintenance notices, and adjusted punctuation. This adapted version is shared under the same license. For references, see the original article.
Images, from Wikimedia Commons:
- Belodon sp teeth.jpg by Ghedoghedo, CC BY-SA 4.0
- Belodon.jpg by Joseph Smit, Public domain
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