Akkedops
| Akkedops Temporal range:
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|---|---|
| File:Akkedops bremneri (holotype - lateral and occipital views).png | |
| Holotype skull in lateral (side) (A, B) and occipital (braincase) (C, D) views | |
| Scientific classification Edit this classification | |
| Kingdom: | Animalia |
| Phylum: | Chordata |
| Class: | Reptilia |
| Family: | †Younginidae (?) |
| Genus: | †Akkedops Mooney, Scott & Reisz, 2025 |
| Species: | †A. bremneri
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| Binomial name | |
| †Akkedops bremneri Mooney, Scott & Reisz, 2025
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Akkedops is an extinct genus of early neodiapsid sauropsids known from the Late Permian of South Africa. The genus contains a single species, Akkedops bremneri, described based on several skulls and skeletons.
Discovery and naming
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The Akkedops holotype specimen, SAM-PK-K6205, was discovered by D.T. Bremner in the 1980s in outcrops of the Beaufort Group (Karoo Supergroup) in South Africa. The specimen consists of a single, nearly complete skull with associated postcranial fragments. The specimen is somewhat crushed and distorted.[1]
In 2025, Mooney, Scott & Reisz described Akkedops bremneri as a new genus and species of early neodiapsids based on these fossil remains. The generic name, Akkedops, combines the Afrikaans word akkedis, meaning "lizard", with the Greek suffix opsis, meaning appearance, in reference to the superficially lizard-like morphology of the preserved material. The specific name, bremneri, honors the discoverer of the holotype specimen.[1]
Mooney, Scott & Reisz also referred two other specimens to Akkedops based on similarities in their anatomy and discovery locality: BP/1/2614, an additional nearly complete but crushed skull, and SAM-PK-K7710, an aggregation of around seven partial individuals originally described as juveniles of the related Youngina.[1][2] In their 2025 redescription of Galesphyrus, a fellow Permian South African sauropsid, Buffa and colleauges questioned the referral of SAM-PK-K7710 to Akkedops, and restricted their phylogenetic scoring of this taxon to just the holotype, SAM-PK-K6205.[3]
Classification
[edit | edit source]To test the relationships of Akkedops, Mooney, Scott & Reisz (2025) scored this taxon in the data matrix of Buffa et al. (2024).[4] This phylogenetic analysis placed Akkedops as the sister taxon to Sauria (crown-group reptiles) within the Neodiapsida, diverging after Youngina. These results are displayed in Topology A below.[1] Later in 2025, Buffa, Jenkins, and Benoit published an extensively updated and expanded version of this phylogenetic matrix, incorporating the A. bremneri holotype and SAM-PK-K7710 as separate OTUs (operational taxonomic units). Their results supported the placement of these two specimens as sister taxa within a monophyletic Younginidae, also including Youngina, with multiple additional lineages between this clade and the reptile crown-group. These results are displayed in Topology B below.[3]
| Topology A: Mooney et al. (2025) tree[1]
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Topology B: Buffa et al. (2025) tree[3]
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References
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