Cistecephalidae is an extinct family of dicynodont therapsids from the Late Permian of South Africa, India and Zambia. It includes the genera Cistecephalus, Cistecephaloides, and Kawingasaurus. Cistecephalids are thought to have had a fossorial or burrowing lifestyle, with adaptations such as broad skulls, strong forelimbs, and squat bodies. A similar group of dicynodonts called the pylaecephalids were also fossorial, although to a lesser extent than cistecephalids. Cistecephalids showed a high level of endemism, with each of the five known species unique to a single region.
Cistecephalidae is an extinct family of dicynodont therapsids from the Late Permian of South Africa, India and Zambia. It includes the genera Cistecephalus, Cistecephaloides, and Kawingasaurus. Cistecephalids are thought to have had a fossorial or burrowing lifestyle, with adaptations such as broad skulls, strong forelimbs, and squat bodies. A similar group of dicynodonts called the pylaecephalids were also fossorial, although to a lesser extent than cistecephalids. Cistecephalids showed a high level of endemism, with each of the five known species unique to a single region.
==Description==
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).