Lystrosaurus

Lystrosaurus, extinct genus of about seven species of medium-sized heavily built animals that lived from the middle of the Permian Period (298.9 million to 251.9 million years ago) until early in the Triassic Period (251.9 million to 201.3 million years ago). Lystrosaurus was part of the Dicynodontia (an extinct group of mammal-like reptiles), part of the larger synapsid clade of vertebrates which includes living mammals. Its fossils have been discovered in Africa, India, and Antarctica. The genus was one of the few synapsid genera to survive the massive Permian extinction, and it was the only abundant synapsid that remained after the climatic and ecological upheaval had ended. Lystrosaurus fossils may serve as indicators of the boundary between the Permian and Triassic periods and also are part of the body of evidence supporting the theory of continental drift .

Lystrosaurus was roughly 1 metre (about 3 feet) long and was heavily built. It had dorsally located eye orbits, an unusual beaklike face, and two tusks set deeply in the upper jaw. The structure of the palate and mandible indicates that Lystrosaurus had a horny beak similar to that of a turtle, and the anatomy of the skull indicates that Lystrosaurus had a herbivorous diet. Wear on the tusks indicates that the animal used them for digging or rooting out vegetation. It had a spreading posture and a short tail. The morphology of the skeleton and its microscopic structure suggest that at least some species may have been semi-aquatic. Bone histology supports the notion that Lystrosaurus was a fast-growing animal similar to modern mammals and birds. Burrow structures have frequently been found in the same rock units as Lystrosaurus, but only one has been found with a Lystrosaurus skeleton inside. Based on the size of the dead animal and the burrow, most likely another animal made the burrow and Lystrosaurus was dragged into it by a predator. In South Africa, evidence shows that two species lived side by side in the same floodplain environments.

Lystrosaurus provides an important piece of evidence in the debate about whether Earth’s continents had significantly changed their positions in the geological past, the idea first proposed by German meteorologist and geophysicist Alfred Wegener in 1912 and popularly known as continental drift. Today many lines of evidence indicate that continents are continually moving, but evidence before the mid-20th century came primarily from similarities in the geology of coastlines found on either side of the Atlantic Ocean and from the distributions of similar plants and animals on far-flung continents. Many scientists thought that Africa, India, Australia, South America, and Antarctica had once been connected into a large ancient continent known as Gondwana. By the mid-1960s, Lystrosaurus fossils had been found in Africa and India. (Some studies also posited the discovery of Lystrosaurus fossils in South America, but those discoveries are controversial.) In 1969 a field expedition led by American paleontologist Edwin H. Colbert recovered Lystrosaurus fossils from Lower Triassic rocks in Antarctica’s Transantarctic Mountains. Those fossils belonged to a species previously found in Africa, providing further evidence that the distant present-day continents were once connected.

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