RHINECEPS NYASAENSIS

RHINECEPS NYASAENSIS

( HAUGHTON, 1927) WATSON, 1962

Rhineceps nyasaensis Haughton, 1927: 69 , original description based on a mandibular fragment.

Rhineceps nyasaensis ( Haughton, 1927) – Watson (1962: 231), nov. comb. (described further holotype material including the skull and the rest of the mandible); Schoch & Milner (2000: 70).

Holotype: SAM-PK-7866, two mandibular fragments: the middle third of a left hemimandible, and a piece close to the level of the anterior coronoid.

Type locality and horizon: Mount Waller area, Malawi (‘Nyasaland’), from the ‘Upper Bone Bed’ of the Chiweta Beds, ‘latest Cistecephalus zone’ ( Haughton, 1927: 69; Watson, 1962: 231), Lopingian ( Rubidge et al., 2013).

Referred specimens: UMCZ T. 259, an almost complete skull, missing only the left postero-lateral side ( Fig. 7A–D View Figure 7 ), associated with a right hemimandible in two pieces and the anterior third of a left hemimandible.

Remarks: The holotype of R. nyasaensis comprises two fragments identified by Haughton (1927: 71) as part of a left mandibular ramus and ‘a piece of upper jaw’. Five years later Haughton mentioned, in a letter to Parrington, that the skull fragment instead belonged to the anterior end of a right mandibular ramus (see Watson, 1962: 231). Parrington collected a second specimen (a skull and fragments of the right and left hemimandible) from the same locality as Haughton’s material. Because Haughton and Parrington’s materials seem to make up a single skull, Watson reasonably concluded they belonged to the same individual and erected the new taxon Rhineceps ( Watson, 1962: 231) .