Bauria

▪ paleontology

      extinct genus of mammal-like reptiles found as fossils in South African rocks of the Early Triassic Period (251 million to 245 million years ago). The skull of Bauria had several mammal-like features. A secondary palate separates air and food passages. The teeth show specialization and are differentiated into a set of incisor-like, caninelike, and molarlike cheek teeth. A single bone, the dentary, dwarfs the other lower jawbones, a trend toward the mammalian condition of only one bone, the dentary. Bauria and its relatives did not survive the Early Triassic.

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