One More Strange Reptile

Remember my post from last year about azendohsaurs and trilophosaurs? Well just the other day, paleoartist extraordinaire Gabriel Ugueto posted a sketch of something called Teraterpeton. I had no idea what this zany-looking reptile was, so I looked it up and was flabbergasted to find that it's a trilophosaur that is quite unlike Trilophosaurus. You'll notice that I did mention Teraterpeton in passing in that post, which must mean I didn't think it was a trilophosaur or at least was not unambiguously a trilophosaur. Turns out I'm incorrect--Teraterpeton is a perfectly good trilophosaur, and therefore an allokotosaur!

Very Specific Strange Reptiles

Azendohsaurus madagaskarensis by Matt Celeskey.

The term "strange reptiles" could apply to just about every animal I've ever written about on this blog, so you'll forgive me for not loving the name Allokotosauria, an up-and-coming group that was formalized in 2015. The name really says nothing about its members, the similarly newly-minted Azendohsauridae and the longstanding Trilophosauridae. These are archosauromorphs that sit well outside of the Ornithodira-Crurotarsi divide, and are instead related to such eclectic animals as rhynchosaurs and protorosaurs. As I suspect my readers have at least heard of Trilophosaurus, I'll start this essay by discussing Azendohsaurus.