Feeserpeton oklahomensis

Feeserpeton oklahomensis is a small parareptile known from one nearly complete skull at Richards Spur, Oklahoma. Computed tomography revealed parts of the palate, braincase and lower jaw that could not be examined through the surrounding rock. That makes the species unusually informative about skull anatomy, but it leaves its body, limbs and total length unknown. The profile belongs in the other fossil reptile catalogue among early amniote branches with very different fossil records.

Quick facts

A name tied to Richards Spur

Sean Modesto MacDougall and Robert Reisz described Feeserpeton oklahomensis in 2012 from OMNH 73541. The genus honours Mike Feese, associated with the Dolese Brothers quarry, and the species name refers to Oklahoma. The holotype is a near-complete skull recovered from the Lower Permian fissure-fill deposits at Richards Spur. It is not one of many skeletons: at present, it is the only known specimen.

Richards Spur is a cave and fissure-fill locality with a diverse early Permian terrestrial fauna. Bones entered cavities and were preserved in deposits unlike an ordinary river floodplain. The site has yielded numerous small tetrapods, but shared locality alone does not establish that every species lived in the same microhabitat or interacted directly.

What the skull preserves

The skull is small and has a combination of features used to identify lanthanosuchoid parareptiles. The roof includes a ridge above the orbit, while the rear margin has a distinctive notch. The palate bears tooth-bearing surfaces, and the jaws carry small teeth. These characters allow the animal to be compared with other parareptiles even though no vertebrae or limbs are known.

The tooth arrangement is compatible with taking small prey, perhaps arthropods, but the menu remains an inference. Tooth shape and spacing constrain possible feeding mechanics; they do not reveal a specific meal. With no postcranial material, claims about its gait, climbing, swimming or total body size would be speculative.

Why CT mattered

The original description could only document anatomy visible on the skull's exposed surfaces. A later computed-tomography study scanned OMNH 73541 and digitally separated bone from matrix. This exposed the mandibular ramus, palate, sphenethmoid, epipterygoids and braincase, structures that were hidden or difficult to inspect without damaging the specimen.

CT does not make the fossil complete. The scan records differences in X-ray density, and a researcher must interpret where one bone ends and another begins. That process can reveal previously inaccessible anatomy while retaining uncertainty where the contrast is poor. The resulting character observations improved phylogenetic tests, but the family tree remains a hypothesis built from comparative evidence.

A small branch in a Permian community

Parareptiles were a diverse group of early reptiles rather than a single ecological type. Lanthanosuchoids are among its less familiar branches. Feeserpeton helps fill that gap because its skull preserves internal details unavailable in many fragmentary taxa. It was not a mammal, amphibian or dinosaur, and the name should not be confused with the superficially similar word “fossil.”

The known evidence supports a small animal with a specialised skull and likely predatory feeding. It does not tell us its colour, skin, posture, exact size, reproductive biology or behaviour. Any full-body image necessarily extrapolates beyond the only fossil currently assigned to the species.