Aleodon
Aleodon is an extinct genus of cynodonts that lived from the Middle to Late Triassic. Relatively few analyses have been conducted to identify the phylogenetic placement of Aleodon, although some have placed it as a sister taxon to Chiniquodon. Two species of Aleodon are recognized: A. brachyrhamphus which was discovered in Tanzania, and A. cromptoni which was discovered most recently in Brazil.

Vanessa Lapitan · CC BY-SA 4.0 · via Wikipedia/Commons. May be a photograph of a specimen, or an artist’s reconstruction — an interpretation of a skeleton, since colour and soft tissue are almost never preserved.
On record
Recorded, not inferred- Sits inside
- ProbainognathiaPBDB
- Motility
- actively mobilePBDB, for Osteichthyes
- Environment
- terrestrialPBDB, for Amniota
Time the record covers
At most 20 million years on record.
Every occurrence read is dated to somewhere between 247 Mya and 227.3 Mya, and nothing in the dating separates them, so that window is what the record shows rather than a span.
6 occurrences of Aleodon on record, most of them in the Middle Triassic. Bar height is expected occurrences, not a count: each fossil is spread across the span it is dated to, so a tall narrow bar means tight dating and a low wide one means loose.
When
6 occurrencesThese are dates about fossils, not the animal: the record can only begin after it arose and end before it died out, so either end may reach further. Shares are expected occurrences: a fossil dated to a span is counted partly in each period it straddles. More on what this infers.
Found in
2 formations
- Omingonde Formation · Karoo Group1
- Manda Beds Formation1
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The named rock units Aleodon has been recovered from, largest first. Drawn where the rock is now, not where it formed. 4 occurrences have no formation on record, which is common for older literature.
Aleodon and its relatives
Middle TriassicWhere Aleodon and its relatives were recorded in the Middle Triassic.
Found in the same rock
7 taxa- Diademodontidae1 site
- Protuberum cabralensis1 site
- Ruhuhuaria reiszi1 site
- Scalenodon angustifrons1 site
- Stagonosuchus major1 site
- Stanocephalosaurus pronus1 site
- Unio1 site
The Paleobiology Database records 6 sites for Aleodon, and this reads all of them. The number is how many of those sites it was catalogued from too.
This is not a list of everything alive at the time. It is only what has come out of the same ground as this animal and been written down.
Entered from
3 references- The African cynodont Aleodon (Cynodontia, Probainognathia) in the Triassic of southern Brazil and its biostratigraphic significance4
- A Middle Triassic cynodont fauna from Namibia and its implications for the biogeography of Gondwana1
- On some Triassic cynodonts from Tanganyika1
Each of the 6 occurrences read was entered from one of these publications, ordered by how many each accounts for. This is not a search for papers mentioning the name. Entries link to doi.org where the Paleobiology Database holds an identifier, and to its own record where it does not. Relayed as the Paleobiology Database holds them, not checked against what they resolve to.
Media and terms
Media content1
Picture of Aleodon
- Source
- Wikipedia/Commons
- Credit
- Vanessa Lapitan
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
- Commercial use
- the licence allows it
No 3D scan of Aleodon was found in MorphoSource and Sketchfab.
Smithsonian Open Access was not reached for this taxon, so this list is what the others held rather than everything there is.
The description on this site
- Source
- Wikipedia, “Aleodon”
- Licence
- CC BY-SA 4.0
This is what the site found, which is not the same as what exists.
Keep going
What may have been alongside itProbainognathia through timeFormations of the Middle TriassicThe world it lived on
Occurrence data from the Paleobiology Database, CC BY 4.0. Crompton 1955