Troll_Man
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WWD: Pseudotriconodon wildi
🕑 Added 2023-04-13 22:25:47 +0000 UTCThis is the cynodont equivalent... a smaller cynodont. Okay, so the story behind WWD's cynodont is a bit and complicated. It went unnamed in the episode, but the model of the cynodont was based on Thrinaxodon, which lived in the Earliest Triassic of South Africa and Antarctica. Its presence in in the Late Triassic Chinle Formation in Arizona was based on two undescribed teeth at the time thought to have come from a large cynodont. The teeth were eventually described in a 2005 study, and named Kraterokheirodon, but the re-description found the teeth could not confidently be assigned to any amniote group. However, even when the teeth was believed to have come from cynodonts, they were believed to have come from a traversodont, which were herbivorous, unlike the predatory animal in the episode.
Honestly this is only marginally better, because Pseudotriconodon is also a tooth taxa with a very ambiguous classification (although it's still considered a carnivorous cynodont). It was picked merely because it lived in more or less the same time and place as the other animals and because basically all cynodonts known from the general time and region were also small tooth taxa. I imagine this probably wouldn't be chasing away the coelophysoid anymore though.
This was the species that made me consider having the revamped locale be the Lower Elliot Formation, because there's a very large cynodont species known from the location, Scalenodontoides, a traversodont which was the largest known non-mammalian cynodont. The locale has no known coelophysoid (not until the Upper Elliot Formation) or pterosaurs however, plus keeping it in Europe allowed me to retain at least one original species.
