Lystrosaurus was a classic example of a dicynodont (“two dog toothed”) therapsid—that is, one of the “mammal-like reptiles” of the late Permian and early Triassic periods that preceded the dinosaurs,
![](https://worldnewsroom.info/eng/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/100140_web.jpg)
lived alongside the archosaurs (the dinosaurs’ true ancestors), and eventually evolved into the earliest mammals of the Mesozoic Era.
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As therapsids go, though, Lystrosaurus was on the much less mammal-like end of the scale:
![](https://worldnewsroom.info/eng/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/512px-202012_Lystrosaurus.svg_.png)
it’s unlikely that this reptile possessed either fur or a warm-blooded metabolism, putting it in stark contrast to near contemporaries like Cynognathus and Thrinaxodon.
![](https://worldnewsroom.info/eng/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/154-1541787_lystrosaurus-ark-survival-evolved-lystrosaurus.png)
The most impressive thing about Lystrosaurus is how widespread it was. The remains of this Triassic reptile have been unearthed in India, South Africa and even Antarctica
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(these three continents were once merged together into the giant continent of Pangea), and its fossils are so numerous that they account for a whopping 95 percent of the bones recovered at some fossil beds.
![](https://worldnewsroom.info/eng/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/IMG_6490.jpg)
No less an authority than the famous evolutionary biologist Richard Dawkins has called Lystrosaurus the “Noah” of the Permian/Triassic boundary,
![](https://worldnewsroom.info/eng/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/IMG_6515.jpg)
being one of the few creatures to survive this little-known global extinction event 250 million years ago that killed 95 percent of marine animals and 70 percent of terrestrial ones.
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Why was Lystrosaurus so successful when so many other genera went extinct? No one knows for sure, but there are a few theories.
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Perhaps the unusually large lungs of Lystrosaurus allowed it to cope with plunging oxygen levels at the Permian-Triassic boundary; perhaps Lystrosaurus was somehow spared thanks to its presumed semi-aquatic lifestyle
![](https://worldnewsroom.info/eng/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/dd59.jpg)
(the same way crocodiles managed to survive the K/T Extinction tens of millions of years later); or perhaps Lystrosaurus was so “plain vanilla”
![](https://worldnewsroom.info/eng/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Wegener_fossils-mapped.png)
and unspecialized compared to other therapsids (not to mention so petitely built) that it managed to endure environmental stresses that rendered its fellow reptiles kaput.
![](https://worldnewsroom.info/eng/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/lystrosaurus-size.jpg)
(Refusing to subscribe to the second theory, some paleontologists believe that Lystrosaurus actually thrived in the hot, arid, oxygen-starved environments that prevailed during the first few million years of the Triassic period.)
![](https://worldnewsroom.info/eng/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/lystrosaurus-by-darren-pepper.jpg)
There are over 20 identified species of Lystrosaurus, four of them from the Karoo Basin in South Africa, the most productive source of Lystrosaurus fossils in the entire world.
![](https://worldnewsroom.info/eng/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Lystrosaurus_skeleton.jpg)
By the way, this unprepossessing reptile made a cameo appearance in the late 19th century Bone Wars: an amateur fossil-hunter described a skull to the American paleontologist Othniel C. Marsh,
![](https://worldnewsroom.info/eng/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Lystrosaurus_hedini_IMG_4469-scaled.jpg)
but when Marsh didn’t express any interest, the skull was forwarded instead to his arch-rival Edward Drinker Cope, who coined the name Lystrosaurus.
![](https://worldnewsroom.info/eng/wp-content/uploads/2022/08/Lystrosaurus_BW.jpg)
Oddly, a short time later, Marsh purchased the skull for his own collection, perhaps wishing to examine it more closely for any mistakes Cope may have made!
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