Lalieudorhynchus

Lalieudorhynchus Temporal range: Guadalupian Wordian–Capitanian PreꞒ Ꞓ O S D C P T J K Pg N
Partial postcranial skeleton (cast) of Lalieudorhynchus gandi on display at the Musée de Lodève. The sacral vertebrae are not present here.
Scientific classification
Domain:	Eukaryota
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Clade:	Synapsida
Clade:	†Caseasauria
Family:	†Caseidae
Genus:	†Lalieudorhynchus Werneburg et al., 2022
Species
†Lalieudorhynchus gandi Werneburg et al., 2022 (type)

Lalieudorhynchus is an extinct genus of caseid synapsids that lived during the Guadalupian (= Middle Permian) in what is now Southern France. The genus is only known by its type species, Lalieudorhynchus gandi, which was named in 2022 by Ralf Werneburg, Frederik Spindler, Jocelyn Falconnet, Jean-Sébastien Steyer, Monique Vianey-Liaud, and Joerg W. Schneider. Lalieudorhynchus is represented by a partial postcranial skeleton discovered in the Lodève basin in the central part of the Hérault department in the Occitanie region. It belongs to an individual measuring approximately 3.75 m (12.3 ft) in length. The degree of ossification of its bones, however, indicates that it was a late juvenile or still growing young adult. Based on the internal structure of its bones, the describing authors interpreted Lalieudorhynchus as a semiaquatic animal that may have had a lifestyle similar to that of hippopotamus, spending part of its time in water but returning to land for food, though the idea that caseids were semi-aquatic has been previously contested by other authors. It is geologically one of the youngest known representatives of the caseids. The phylogenetic analysis proposed by Werneburg and colleagues identified Lalieudorhynchus as a derived caseid closely related to the North American species "Cotylorhynchus" hancocki.^[1]