Edops

Edops Temporal range: Early Permian
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Order:	†Temnospondyli
Family:	†Edopidae Langston, 1953
Genus:	†Edops Romer and Witter, 1942
Species
†E. craigi Romer and Witter, 1942 (type)

Edops ('glutton face') is an extinct genus of temnospondyl. Unlike more advanced kinds they exhibited an archaic pattern of palatal bones, and still possessed various additional bones at the back of the skull. Edopoids also had particularly big premaxillae (the bones that form the tip of the snout) and proportionally small external nostrils. Within the clade, the most basal member seems to be Edops from the Early Permian of the USA, a broad-skulled animal with large palatal teeth. It was named for its large jaws (from Latin edo "glutton" and Greek ops "face, look").

It was fairly big, at 2 m in length. Fragmentary remains from the Viséan of Scotland appear to come from Edops or a close relative and hence predate the type Edops material of the Permian.

References

• Ruta, M., Pisani, D., Lloyd, G. T. and Benton, M. J. 2007. A supertree of Temnospondyli: cladogenetic patterns in the most species-rich group of early tetrapods. Proceedings of the Royal Society B-Biological Sciences 274: 3087-3095.