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Aelurosaurus
Skull of Aelurosaurus felinus (after Owen 1881)
Aelurosaurus ("cat lizard", from Ancient Greek αἴλουρος "cat" and σαῦρος "lizard") was first named by Richard Owen in 1881 since it appeared to be an ancestor for cat-like marsupials, but not yet a mammal itself.
Aelurosaurus is a small, carnivorous, extinct genus of gorgonopsian therapsids from the Middle to Late Permian of South Africa. It includes five species, A. felinus, A. whaitsi, A. polyodon, A. wilmanae, and A.? watermeyeri. A. felinus, the type species, is generally well described with established features, while the other four species are not due to their poorly preserved holotypes.
Aelurosaurus felinus was originally obtained in the Gough of the Karoo Basin of South Africa, which includes the Tapinocephalus and Pristerognathus Assemblage Zones. They are part of the Beaufort Group, whose stratigraphy includes siltstone, mudstone, and sandstone beds, with evidence of rivers flowing across the land in semi-arid conditions. There have also been recent discoveries of gorgonopsians in Russia's Vyazniki Assemblage.
Sources:
Owen, R. 1881. On the order Theriodontia with a description of a new genus and species (Aelurognathus fel. Ow.). Quat. Jour. Geol. Soc. London. (Vol. 37): 261-265.
Boonstra, L.D. 1935. On the South African Gorgonopsian reptiles preserved in the American Museum of Natural History. American Museum Novitates. 772: 1-14.
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