Edaphosaurus

Common card · No. 309438

Edaphosaurus (, meaning "pavement lizard" for the dense clusters of its teeth) is a genus of extinct edaphosaurid synapsids that lived in what is now North America and Europe around 303.4 to 272.5 million years ago, during the Late Carboniferous to Early Permian. The American paleontologist Edward Drinker Cope first described Edaphosaurus in 1882, naming it for the "dental pavement" on both the upper and lower jaws, from the Greek edaphos έδαφος ("ground"; also "pavement") and σαῦρος (sauros) ("lizard"). Edaphosaurus is important as one of the earliest-known, large, plant-eating (herbivorous), amniote tetrapods (four-legged land-living vertebrates). In addition to the large tooth plates in its jaws, the most characteristic feature of Edaphosaurus is a neural spine sail on its back. A number of other synapsids from the same time period also have tall dorsal sails, most famously the large apex predator Dimetrodon. However, the sail on Edaphosaurus is different in shape and morphology. The...

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