plagiosaur

English

Etymology

Clipping of taxonomic name Plagiosauroidea or Plagiosauridae. By surface analysis, plagio- +‎ -saur.

Noun

plagiosaur (plural plagiosaurs)

  1. Any of the superfamily Plagiosauroidea of stereospondyl temnospondyls that lived during the Triassic period.
    • 1965 [1952], Harvard University. Museum of Comparative Zoology, Breviora, numbers 179-230, page 4:
      Certain short-faced Triassic forms tend to have reduced counts; the brachyopid Batrachosuchus having but 17 maxillary teeth and the plagiosaur Gerrothorax having somewhat over 26.
    • 1977, A. Hallam, editor, Patterns of Evolution, as Illustrated by the Fossil Record, volume 5, Elsevier Science, page 413:
      One species that deserves special mention is Latiscopus disjunctus (Wilson, 1948) described from the Upper Triassic of Texas. It is the only amphibian of its age that is not a metoposaur, a plagiosaur, a capitosauroid or a brachyopoid.
    • 2017, Lawrence H. Tanner, editor, The Late Triassic World: Earth in a Time of Transition, Springer International Publishing, page 374:
      In contrast, the amphibian biofacies of Berdyankian time is dominated by mastodonsaurids and plagiosaurs, with much lesser numbers of prolacertiforms, archo-saurs and small cynodonts.
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