
Captorhinus (from , 'to gulp down' and , 'nose') is an extinct genus of captorhinid reptiles that lived during the Permian period. Its remains are known from North America (Oklahoma, Texas) and possibly South America.
Captorhinus (from , 'to gulp down' and , 'nose') is an extinct genus of captorhinid reptiles that lived during the Permian period. Its remains are known from North America (Oklahoma, Texas) and possibly South America.
== Description == thumb|left|Restoration of C. aguti While there are several forms of Captorhinus, there are three main species that are the best known. The previously mentioned Captorhinus aguti is the type species of Captorhinus, but there is also a fair amount of material collected on Captorhinus magnus and Captorhinus laticeps. left|thumb|Skull of Captorhinus kierani The most distinguishable trait of Captorhinus is its namesake: the hooking of the snout from prominent ventral angulation of the premaxillary process. Other notable characteristics include the dorsally positioned alary process of the jugal on the medial surface and flushed with the orbital margin, the retroarticular process longer anteroposteriorly than broad, and the anteriormost dentary tooth strongly procumbent. The posterior teeth are either chisel-shaped or ogival. Until the late 1990s, Captorhinus was diagnosed by the presence of multiple rows of marginal teeth on the maxillary and dentary bones. However, single-rowed captorhinid elements have been discovered, proving this hypothesis incorrect.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).