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Paleothyris Fossil range: Mid to Late Carboniferous (Middle Pennsylvanian)
Artist's life restoration of Paleothyris
Scientific classification
Kingdom:	Animalia
Phylum:	Chordata
Class:	Sauropsida
Order:	Captorhinida
Suborder:	Captorhinomorpha
Family:	Protorothyrididae
Genus:	Paleothyris Carroll, 1969
Species
P. acadiana Carroll, 1969 (type)

Paleothyris was a small, agile, lizard-like reptile which lived in the Middle Pennsylvanian epoch in Nova Scotia and is the oldest known amniote. Paleothyris had sharp teeth and large eyes, meaning that it was a nocturnal hunter. It was about a foot long. It probably fed on insects and other smaller animals found on the floor of its forest home. Paleothyris was an early sauropsid, yet it still had some features that were more primitive, more tetrapod-like than reptile-like, especially its skull, which lacked fenestrae, holes found in the skulls of most modern reptiles and mammals.

[edit] See also

• Hylonomus
• Petrolacosaurus
• Westlothiana
• Archaeothyris
• Carboniferous tetrapods

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