Dendromaia is an extinct genus of varanopid from the Carboniferous of Nova Scotia. It contains a single species, Dendromaia unamakiensis. Dendromaia is the oldest known varanopid and the only one found in Nova Scotia. Known from a large partial skeleton preserved with its tail wrapped around a much smaller partial skeleton, Dendromaia may also represent the oldest known occurrence of parental care in the fossil record. While the larger skeleton possessed certain mycterosaurine-like features, the smaller skeleton resembled basal varanopids such as Archaeovenator and Pyozia, creating uncertainty
Dendromaia is an extinct genus of varanopid from the Carboniferous of Nova Scotia. It contains a single species, Dendromaia unamakiensis. Dendromaia is the oldest known varanopid and the only one found in Nova Scotia. Known from a large partial skeleton preserved with its tail wrapped around a much smaller partial skeleton, Dendromaia may also represent the oldest known occurrence of parental care in the fossil record. While the larger skeleton possessed certain mycterosaurine-like features, the smaller skeleton resembled basal varanopids such as Archaeovenator and Pyozia, creating uncertainty over whether characteristics at the base of Varanopidae have legitimate phylogenetic significance or instead reflect the immaturity of basal varanopid specimens.
== Discovery == Dendromaia unamakiensis is known from a slab and counterslab containing two skeletons. The specimen, NSM017GF020.001, was discovered in a petrified lycopod stump at Point Aconi on Cape Breton Island in Nova Scotia. This site is part of the Sydney Mines Formation, which is dated to the late Moscovian stage of the Carboniferous period, 309-306 million years ago. "Dendromaia" roughly translates to "the mother in the tree", according to its discovery in a stump and proposed parental care. The specific name references Unama'kik, the Mi'kmaq name for Cape Breton Island. The genus and species were described by Hillary Maddin, Arjan Mann, and Brian Hebert in 2019. Hebert had discovered the specimen in 2017.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).