Neopteroplax is an extinct genus of eogyrinid embolomere closely related to European genera such as Eogyrinus and Pteroplax. Members of this genus were among the largest embolomeres (and Carboniferous tetrapods in general) in North America. Neopteroplax is primarily known from a large (~40 cm) skull found in Ohio, although fragmentary embolomere fossils from Texas and New Mexico have also been tentatively referred to the genus. Despite its similarities to specific European embolomeres, it can be distinguished from them due to a small number of skull and jaw features, most notably a lower suran
Neopteroplax is an extinct genus of eogyrinid embolomere closely related to European genera such as Eogyrinus and Pteroplax. Members of this genus were among the largest embolomeres (and Carboniferous tetrapods in general) in North America. Neopteroplax is primarily known from a large (~40 cm) skull found in Ohio, although fragmentary embolomere fossils from Texas and New Mexico have also been tentatively referred to the genus. Despite its similarities to specific European embolomeres, it can be distinguished from them due to a small number of skull and jaw features, most notably a lower surangular at the upper rear portion of the lower jaw.
== Discovery == thumb|left|Skull cast of N. conemaughensis from above The type species, Neopteroplax conemaughensis, is known from a large skull found in Late Carboniferous shale during railroad renovations in Bloomingdale, Ohio. Although damaged by excavators, most of the left side of the skull can be reconstructed based on surviving fragments. The only other Neopteroplax fossils recovered from this site were a few rib and vertebra fragments. The site's chronological age is slightly younger than the famous Carboniferous deposits of the nearby Linton diamond coal mine.
Discovered by embedding cosine similarity (sentence-transformers MiniLM, 384-dim).