Pantelosaurus
Pantelosaurus is an extinct genus of basal sphenacodonts known from the Early Permian period of Saxony, Germany. It contains a single species, Pantelosaurus saxonicus.
Discovery
Pantelosaurus is known from about 6 individuals including skulls and partial postcranial skeletons. All specimens were collected at Königin-Carola-Schacht locality, in Dresden, from the uppermost part of the Döhlen Formation, lower Rotliegend Group, dating to the Asselian stage of the Cisuralian series, about 299–296.4 million years old.Classification
Pantelosaurus was first described by von Huene as a pelycosaur. In 1940, Alfred Sherwood Romer and Llewellyn Price revised the taxonomy of pelycosaurs and synonymized Pantelosaurus with Haptodus, creating the new combination Haptodus saxonicus. After describing a new species of Haptodus in 1977, Currie synonymized all European haptodontines, as well as Cutleria wilmarthi, with the type of the genus, H. baylei. Later, Laurin considered Haptodontinae to represent a polyphyletic grade of basal sphenacodonts, and revalidated Pantelosaurus among other genera and species. His revision has since been accepted. Only three phylogenetic analyses included Pantelosaurus. Laurin, Fröbisch et al. and Benson recovered it as a basal sphenacodont, more derived than Haptodus garnettensis or in a polytomy with it. The cladogram below shows Pantelosaurus' phylogenetic position among other synapsids following Benson.Spindler utilized use of the name Palaeohatteriidae for the clade comprising Palaeohatteria and Pantelosaurus.