Karenites is an extinct genus of therocephalian therapsids from the Late Permian of Russia. The only species is Karenites ornamentatus, named in 1995. Several fossil specimens are known from the town of Kotelnich in Kirov Oblast.
Karenites is an extinct genus of therocephalian therapsids from the Late Permian of Russia. The only species is Karenites ornamentatus, named in 1995. Several fossil specimens are known from the town of Kotelnich in Kirov Oblast.
==Description== Karenites is known from a partial holotype skeleton, two partial skulls, and isolated jaw bones. Although incomplete, the skulls preserve small and delicate structures like nasal turbinates on the inside of the skull and the stapes bone of the ear. The skull of Karenites is about long, with the snout much longer than the temporal region of the skull behind the eye sockets. Viewed from above, the skull is triangular. The snout is broad, and the skull widens toward the occiput or posterior margin. Two large holes behind the eye socket called temporal fenestrae occupy most of the posterior skull. Between these fenestra is a narrow sagittal crest. In front of this crest, the skull roof bones are weakly pitted with small bumps and ridges for blood vessels. Some specimens include parts of the scleral ring, a ring of bone embedded in the eye.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).